APD Zone 2 Fangirl Report – Crime Scene
It’s that time again – another week of “cop school” – and it did not disappoint. This time we traveled to the Annex on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway where they handle ballistics, fingerprints, process crime scenes and track and store evidence and property. Director Candace Walker heads up this operation and she is an impressive spitfire who clearly knows her stuff. So let’s dive in…
Ballistics – What we see on TV is pretty true to life in this part of the tour:
- They have a cool firing tank that they use to test firearms. It looks like a cryogenics tank or a coffin and they laughingly call it their hot tub,
- They have an indoor sound proofed firing range (where I will be headed when there is a zombie apocalypse),
- They have a national database, NIBIN, of shell casings they can use to track guns and connect crimes, and
- They have TONS of guns that have been confiscated from crime scenes.
The people that work in ballistics have some serious eye strain – their whole job is to analyze minute markings on shell casings and enter them into the database so they can be tied to crimes. They’ve analyzed something like 41,000 and have made some amazing connections. Here’s a cool picture of their “Pandora’s Box” case which shows the results of their work.
The gun collection room was amazing and became totally disturbing once I saw how enthralled some of my classmates were with it. There were the usual handguns and assault rifles, antique guns that looked like they were from the Wild West, miniature Derringers and even BB guns that looked more real than the real ones. Lieutenant Jennings Kilgore even showed us his 007 pen gun!
Fingerprinting – This also is pretty much like you expect it to be – they get fingerprints, take pictures of them and then use a macdaddy computer system to analyze them against a national database called AFIS. If you’ve ever had your prints taken for any reason you are likely in there. The technicians like Raymond Lauzon mark key features – ridge lines – where they split and where they end – and the program uses those key features to narrow down potential matches. Some key things I learned:
- Fingerprints never change – even over decades
- Scars help identify you don’t bother trying to burn them off
- They look at the whole hand, not just fingertips
Crime Scene Processing: This didn’t match what you see on Bones at all – no Smithsonian Institute here. It is a surprisingly low- tech “lab” and most high school science labs look more real. These guys go to crime scenes of all types and they bring the evidence back here to process it. They use a handful of chemicals and have a few cool toys – but the “go to” is good old Super Glue. The fumes from Super Glue combined with some pink dye lift prints off surfaces almost magically! Who knew Home Depot was a crime fighting supply store?
Different crime scenes have different needs, but according to Crime Scene Supervisor Chris Traugott they most often just need a camera, fingerprint powder, a coin bag for shell casings and a few brushes… quite a departure from TV.
Fun fact – Chris has never in his career actually puked at a crime scene!
Evidence and Property: And finally, the coolest part of the tour – the intake of evidence/property. Lieutenant James Patterson (not the author) showed us stuff dating back to the 1930s including the handwritten log books. The volume and variety of “stuff” is staggering. Picture an IKEA warehouse full to the top with random things ranging from bicycles to suitcases of drugs seized at the airport, to cases of beer seized at illegal parties to mattresses and stolen ATM machines – the whole machine. Visit www.propertyroom.com to buy stuff that is auctioned off after cases are finished.
Top that off with a smaller (but still huge and unfortunately locked) room that houses all the drugs you can literally smell the weed through the door. But the weirdest part is the freezers where temperature sensitive materials (including fetuses and rape kits) are stored. Disappointingly, the gun room was locked so we couldn’t get in there to see the thousands of guns stored there.
The “stuff” was all really cool, but the highlight was that we got to see two officers coming in logging in property in real time. Officer B. Hardeman happened to be logging in some weed he obtained in a traffic stop, so he walked us through the process. This was totally off the cuff and not staged and he couldn’t have been a better spokesperson for APD.
Continuing themes:
- Lots of vacant positions
- Really crappy pay
- Even crappier facilities
- Solid smart people that we should all be thankful are called to do this work
