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hey mr p here in this video we're going to talk specifically about securing and collecting evidence from a crime scene so we've moved out of kind of what the role of an investigator is we are moving out of what can you can expect to have happen at a crime scene and we're moving in to specifically talk about securing and collecting evidence what do you do with a piece of evidence how do you properly secure the piece of evidence how do you properly collect the piece of evidence how do you document the evidence and how do you proceed uh with the securing and collecting of the evidence piece so the first thing you need to do when you get to a crime scene in the case of an investigator is that you need to obviously scan and look and make observations but when you get to the point where you're actually securing and collecting evidence you need to identify what pieces of evidence you have and so there could be dry evidence there could be liquid evidence there could be wet evidence there could be large or small evidence there could be trace evidence biological evidence when there's a variety of different pieces of evidence that you could or one could experience in a crime scene and so i'm talking specifically about dry trace evidence first dry trace evidence is a is a piece of evidence that is dry it doesn't have any moisture in it it could be you know hairs it could be fibers that aren't wet and those pieces of dry evidence are packaged in a paper bindle and placed in a plastic bag which is sealed with tape if the evidence is moist at all or has any residual moisture it needs to be air dried first in order to be stored correctly if a piece of evidence goes into a sealed plastic bag wet it likely will produce mold or fungus which would be detrimental to the piece of evidence it would obviously degrade the evidence and so you'd want to dry it first but if a piece of evidence is dry then you can just go ahead and put it into your bindle and then obviously put it into a sealed plastic bag but you want to make sure it's dry first the way that the dry evidence is packaged is first you would put the piece of evidence in the middle of a sheet of paper okay you would then fold along this line and bring this over you would fold along this line bring it over you can kind of see here that you would essentially fold and bring it down fold bring it up you can go left to right or up down and then you just continually fold in the flaps to the point where you get just a square that is completely contained okay within or the the piece of evidence is completely contained within and then you would place that folded up piece of paper into a plastic bag so you would slide that into a plastic bag you would fold the plastic bag flap over you would tape the flap down you would then sign over the top of the tape that's really important because it ensures that the the signature of the person is on the piece of evidence which means that that is the person that without a doubt 100 percent package the piece of evidence and if you assign over the top of the flap and you sign over the top of the tape it makes it really difficult to undo the tape and then re-secure the tape so that the signature lines up right so it just it's a further piece of proof safety that allows individuals when they're working with a piece of evidence to know that it hasn't been tampered with okay another thing you would need to do is you would need to fill out an inventory label we will do that in class we'll practice with that but inventory label basically talks about where the piece of evidence is located um what piece of evidence it is who the suspect is what the date is what the case number is that kind of thing so that storing and analyzing the evidence is a lot more successful and productive okay liquid evidence obviously cannot be put into a paper bindle and stored in a plastic bag and so if there is liquid evidence or arson remains or chemical remains or toxin remains those are going to be stored in an airtight shatterproof containment container larger pieces of evidence may be stored in a larger can smaller piece of evidence obviously in a smaller shatterproof container but these dry evidence or even liquid evidence could also be stored in plastic bags if they're really really big or boxes if they're big but for the most part liquid evidence and arson remains are going to be stored in airtight containers and that's really important because the airtight is required in order to keep the contents from degrading much like when you talk about the dry evidence and needing or the wet evidence and needing to dry prior to putting in the plastic bag we want to ensure that the contents of these containers are airtight so that they don't oxidize they don't leak they don't leech out into the environment that kind of thing so liquid evidence goes into an airtight sealed container dry evidence goes into the paper bindle and then into a paper bag okay or a plastic bag chain of custody chain of custody is really important because there has to be a precise record of all individuals who have handled a piece of evidence after it's collected that is really important because uh a lot of these crime scene investigations or crime scene cases are legal matters and when they're legal matters obviously legal ramifications exist for individuals that are perpetrators or individuals that are witnesses and that kind of thing and so we need to keep a really precise log of all individuals that possess and analyze and touch and interact with the piece of evidence you can kind of see if you look closely at this chain of custody section within the inventory label you'll notice that there are several lines that say received from a date and by and time okay you'll also notice that individuals that receive the the piece of evidence also have to sign over the top of the newly formed sealed flap to just put one more layer of added protection and one more layer of logging that they in fact have interacted with the evidence we don't want anybody to tamper with the evidence we don't want anybody to lose evidence we want to keep everybody accountable we want to hold the entire process accountable everybody within the entire process accountable and so you have to log if you interact with the evidence at all okay even if you handle the evidence you have to mark that you received it from somebody and that you are analyzing it and saying that you received it from them so that's kind of the idea behind the chain of custody logging who has seen and who has interacted with evidence but also who has um who has interacted with evidence and then hal also how dry liquid evidence is stored now we're getting into kind of the mapping of an outdoor crime scene again we are looking for evidence where we're interacting with evidence but we're now in an outdoor crime scene outdoor crime scenes should be marked off carefully usually inside a rectangle or square and that's basically because we want to make a quadrant all of the evidence just like any other crime scene we have to make a quadrant we have to set up our crime scene tape we have to identify what the outer limits or outer boundaries of our crime scene is and that way we can first establish a datum point and sub datum point in this figure the sub datum point is corner one okay so this would be our sub datum point mark the subdata points with stakes or rebar pounded into the ground in this case we would have pounded in stakes in these corners and that way as you'll see later if there's a piece of evidence within our quadrant we actually can triangulate between our known distance okay obviously our square is a known distance a known value and so if you know what this distance is you can actually figure out what these distances are and you can always reconstruct the crime scene in order to figure out exactly where that piece of evidence was the location of any piece of evidence is recorded by measuring the distance to two reference lines along the perimeter of the scene again we can either triangulate from both datum points or we can triangulate from a particular side again if we know this distance and we know this distance we can figure out these distances and without a doubt put our piece of evidence right back where we found it when we want to go back or if we want to go back and reconstruct the crime scene which is really really critical if pieces of evidence are believed to have been lost if pieces of evidence are believed to have been left behind okay there are some times or some instances when we need to go back to a crime scene and kind of reconstruct to kind of get a second opinion kind of get a second look or just re-analyze the scene reinterpret the pieces of evidence that are there because there might have been something that was over missed or missed overlooked okay analyzing evidence all the evidence collected at a crime scene should be processed in a forensic lab that makes sense right there are a lot of scientific analysis that are analyses that are performed those need to obviously be done in a forensic lab most of the the chemical the toxicology the microscopy all of those things cannot be done in the field they have to be done in a forensic lab obviously where the equipment is okay one of the analysis of the evidence is complete the lead detective can generally use it for four purposes they can link a suspect to a scene or a victim they can establish the identity of a victim or a perpetrator compared to eyewitness testimony or acquit innocent purses or persons and so what that means is you have the ability to link a suspect to a scene based on evidence that was at the scene right if in a forensic lab you identify there are fingerprints that you can link to a particular suspect or a particular victim if there's blood typing if there's blood if there's dna if they're hairs fibers you can obviously identify whether or not they match the suspect or match the victim you can establish an identity of a victim or a perpetrator using let's say dna technology right if the perpetrator or victim is unknown and you need to use dental records or you need to use dna you can actually establish an identity of an unknown suspect or an unknown individual based on a dna profile compared to eyewitness testimony you can obviously corroborate the eyewitness testimony with specific forensic evidence if it matches or not and then acquit innocent persons if there is a person of interest or there is a perpetrator or a a suspect that is believed to have committed the crime but the dna doesn't match the fingerprints don't match the hair doesn't match etc then obviously you can acquit innocent persons within the lab which is really really important because we don't want to you don't want to sentence somebody that's innocent right that's really important a detective's responsibilities so a detective is responsible for reconstructing the crime scene objectively and objectively is really really important it has to be based on facts and that is based on evidence share all information with the defense lawyers defensive lawyers obviously are the lawyers that are defending the perpetrator whether the perpetrator is guilty or innocent that doesn't matter there is due process in america and so there is always a defense attorney that is defending the accused okay and last thing we're going to talk about is the idea of a staged crime scene so you've probably heard of situations in which crime scenes are staged right to throw off investigators but crime scenes that are faked or staged can be challenging to analyze because you're not analyzing evidence as it was laid down or as it was deposited you're actually analyzing evidence that was purposely dropped okay or purposely laid to construe a fake scene right so that's obviously challenging most stage crimes are one of the following so arson obviously is a fire that is set intentionally to destroy evidence of another crime or an arson fire is staged to look like an accident murder some murders are staged to look like suicides and burglary can't can be staged to collect insurance money so there are a lot of instances a lot of situations in which cit certain crime scenes are staged or certain crimes are staged to look like other things it is vital that a that a crime scene investigator looks at all of the information objectively and tries not to jump to conclusions because again if an investigator jumps to conclusions they might follow the staged-ness of the crime scene if they were to jump to conclusions and instead of looking objectively at all of the the piece of evidence and trying to figure out exactly what happened objectively with facts not um kind of not that that perception that we talked about okay so stage crime scenes are difficult but are possible to work through it just takes um science it takes forensic science it takes a a good quality investigation looking at all the facts looking objectively at the facts and um and figuring out the truth okay that's all we got if you have questions bring them to class otherwise see ya