CSI: For Real — a guest-blog by real-life CSI John French

I’m delighted to introduce John French, a charming real-life CSI who works for the Baltimore Police.  After a fascinating conversation with John about how TV shows get their crime-scene analysis wrong, I asked him if he’d guest-blog on the Prime-Time Crime Review.  I’m delighted that he accepted.  Without further ado, here he is!  — Allison

 

I’ve never watched the TV show Dexter. I hope it’s better than its ad campaign. The poster for Dexter’s second season shows the serial killer (who is also a blood stain pattern analyst) spattered with blood. The problem is – they got the spatter wrong!

 It looks as if it came straight on to Dexter, from a source at the same level as his face.  But people generally stab downward, at something below their eyes.  To be more realistic, the spatter should be more vertical, and have an upward trail, as if coming from below.

I guess I should introduce myself. I’m John L. French and I’m a crime scene supervisor for the Baltimore City Police Crime Lab. In my spare time I’m also a writer, using my training and experience to write crime, pulp and horror short stories. My latest book is “Here There Be Monsters,” about a BPD detective who is the department’s unofficial monster hunter. I’m also the editor of the anthology “Bad Cop, No Donut,” which features tales of police behaving badly.

I met Allison when she gave an excellent presentation to the Mystery Writers of America. Afterwards we wound up talking shop and that led to her inviting me to write something for this blog about how a crime lab really works, as opposed to how things are on TV.

You’ve seen it, we all have. The processing of the crime scene is now a staple on television shows. The scene is searched, evidence gathered and results come in in record time. What these results are depends on the plot, but from the much missed Law & Order to the CSI franchise it seems that all the work is done by one person. Occasionally, the star of the show must to show how tough she is or how much influence he has and orders the Lab to “rush things and give this case top priority.”

I’m sure it won’t surprise any of Allison’s readers to learn that this ain’t necessarily so. So how does a real crime lab work?

No one does it all. It starts with the crime scene, which is what I do.  In Baltimore the crime scene people are called “Crime Laboratory Technicians.” Our job is twofold. The first is to document scenes by taking photographs, writing reports and drawing crime scene diagrams. The next is to assist in the identification of those involved in the crime by searching for and (hopefully) recovering evidence that can be associated with the assailant, the victim or anyone else who had been on the scene. We dust for latent prints, photograph and recover shoeprints and tire tracks, collect weapons, bullets and cartridge cases, swab for blood and possible DNA, and look for trace evidence such as glass, hair, fibers and soil. Sometimes we dab suspects’ hands for gunshot residue or perform presumptive tests for blood. The evidence we recover is submitted to our Evidence Control Unit (not part of the Lab) and then …

Well, for the crime scene people, that’s it. It’s now up to the other, in-house units of the Laboratory. Each unit has its own specialty. The Firearms Unit examines all the guns, bullets and cartridge cases recovered by the crime scene people and compares them to the case at hand as well as (with the help of a computer database) to open cases. The Latent Print Unit does the same with recovered finger and palm prints as well as chemically processing the evidence we can’t do in the field.

Other units include the Photography, Drug Analysis and the always important Administrative Unit. (If I leave out the last they screw up my overtime.)

Which brings me to the Chemistry Unit. When I started with the Lab some 30-odd years ago, the entire Chemistry Unit – Drugs and Trace – fit into one medium sized room. Things have changed. What was once called the Trace Unit has grown to almost half of the 10^th floor ofPolice HQ and has divided itself into Trace, Questioned Documents, Serology and DNA units. Biological evidence first goes through Serology before going to DNA. Questioned Documents examines and compares not only documents but also shoeprints and tire tracks. Trace is the catch-all for everything else.

And keeping us all straight, making sure we follow the correct procedures is the Quality Assurance Unit as well as a Laboratory Director who oversees the multi-ring circus that is the Laboratory Section.

So as you can see, that one person on TV who does it all really stands for quite a few people, each of whom does his part.

Now as for quick results and priority cases.

Sometimes results are quick. It is possible for a technician working the evening shift to recover a print from a scene and for the Latent Print Unit to examine, compare and enter the print into the computer in the morning and for an identification to be made before the tech reports back to work. The Firearms Unit can work almost as fast, but often there is no gun against which to compare the evidence. As for DNA, even with what we call a Red Ball, a case that takes precedence over all the others, the fastest a profile can come back is a week. Then it has to be matched with known profiles.

In all units, cases are prioritized by the seriousness of the offense, with Crimes Against Persons coming before property crimes. And with each detective wanting his case to take precedence, all detectives have to wait for results.

The above is for a full service lab. Police departments with just a crime scene unit – such as police in smaller jurisdictions — are dependent on State or Federal Labs to do the examinations and analyses for them, which means that they are competing with other police departments who have the same needs.

I hope the above gives some idea of how things are really done in a crime lab. Any questions, just ask. And finally, I’d like to thank Allison for the opportunity to guest on her blog and to thank you for taking the time to read this.

John