Not really, times could go down from weeks to days but still wouldn’t be ping! Instant. And no matter how important the case, saying “enhance” to a computer displaying security camera footage won’t change the angle of the view.
Thanks for the informative post.
I’m wondering about some of the most common prints and marks. How good are forensics teams at matching rounds with barrels/ejection ports/firing pins?
I heard on some show long ago that shoeprints are more commonly used to identify people than fingerprints, is that true?
How easy are fingerprints to get? Can they show through gloves or even be taken from inside gloves?
No, don’t need answer soon : ) I’m wondering about what I perceive to be the butter and bread of forensics.
My best friend is a crime scene technician in a small city in metro Atlanta. Here is a description of most conversations.
Person: “So I saw this thing on CSI…”
Friend: “No.”
Person: “Well, yeah, but, they dusted for prints and…”
Friend: “No.”
Person: “They did this thing with blood…”
Friend: “Sort of.”
Person: “They sprayed Luminol.”
Friend: “Not really.”
According to the cops who dusted the office after a company laptop was stolen, clear prints are about as common as a virgin over age 18 in a whorehouse. They showed us some of the places where you could see someone had touched it and yeah, it was just a big smudge. Have you ever cleaned a computer screen or window someone touched? How often do you see a clear print?
In that particular case, they said it was most likely an inside job, which also meant that any prints wouldn’t mean much unless they happened to belong to someone who should never, ever go into that office.
Of course over the last few years many of the forensic “evidence” have been called into question.
-Fingerprints are not necessarily always unique and most of the time you don’t recover enough of a print to say with certainty it is in fact a likely match, only that you can’t exclude.
- Ballistics tests on bullets and cartridge cases are heavily dependent on subjective analysis.
-Cellphone evidence, turns out that Mobiles don’t necessarily ping the nearest tower.
-Lots of once promising techniques turned out on further study to be a load of hooey. Bite marks, hair analysis, shoe prints, often having no standardized definition of a “match”.
One episode of CSI seemed particularly ludicrous to me. They had surveillance footage of a robbery, but they couldn’t see the faces of the bad guys because they wore hats, dark glasses, and phoney beards. The solution? Just tell the computer to remove the disguises and reveal their faces. Nooooooo problemo! :dubious: :smack:
OK, yeah, anything involving computers they always get so ludicrously wrong that it’s hard to imagine how the writers are smart enough to know how to breathe. My favorite was a scene I saw once (I think it was from NCIS) where two characters are trying to fight off a hacker by both typing on the same keyboard at once.
Another thing I found hard to swallow (pun intended) was when Peter Falk nailed Patrick McGoohan in one of the last episodes of Columbo by comparing a single toothmark in a piece of cheese left at the crime scene to one in a piece of gum picked out of a waste basket in McGoohan’s office. This was supposedly based on an actual incident that was written up in a forensics journal, but I find it really, really hard to believe you could take it into court and get a Murder One conviction with it!
Back when it was still on TV, the show that was always talked about as the most realistic was Barney Miller. Sitting around shooting the shit while filling out endless paperwork. Taking the same complaint from the same nutjob that comes in every Thursday at 2 to make it. And every one in a while, catching the bad guy and tossing him into the holding cell.
Apparently, the 70s sitcom “Barney Miller” got cited by many cops as being the most realistic depiction of police work – a dingy precinct house full of overworked, exasperated cops dealing with an endless parade of cranks, cooks, lowlifes and small-time hoods with an occasional truly dramatic case, and most of the “collars” simply getting released at the end of the day, only to get picked up again the next week.
As for CSI, even more ridiculous than the super-computers has got to be the Walking, Talking Super-Computer Brainiac cops:
Lab Tech: “The report says the blood stain shows traces of dioxyhydroxyethanologocolium.” (instantly followed by…)
Officer #1: “dioxyhydroxyethanologocolium is a rare element used to make microchips used in machines that go ping.” There are four facilities in the Las Vegas are that make machines that go ping and would have dioxyhydroxyethanologocolium available.
Lab Tech: “The report also says that the muddy footprint shows traces of percocoliumidoxide.”
Officer #2: “percocoliumidoxide is a substance used in the making of flourescent hair gel. There are only two labs in the Las Vegas area that make percocoliumidoxide.”
Officer #1: Two of the labs that manufacture percocoliumidoxide also makes dioxyhydroxyethanologocolium."
Officer #2: One of those labs is only .0154973 miles away from the where the body was found. I think we ought to check it out."
Yeah I remember that episode and I agree it’s pretty far fetched. It doesn’t really matter as he confessed on the spot, IIRC.
Have you ever seen an episode of** Columbo** where the villain wouldn’t have walked if he’d just kept his mouth shut?
I actually have a personal anecdote where seeing how evidence is handled in movies/TV paid off for me in some way. But not because of the CSI shows and their like.
About 15 years ago, when paper bank checks were still a common way of making payments, I had my re-order of checks stolen from the mail. The forger went to town, writing 10’s of thousands of checks to various businesses like Walmart, Sam’s Club, jewelry stores, BestBuy, and a seafood place among other businesses (IIRC).
This guy was a pro and also had a state issued driver’s license (or good forgery of) with my info but his picture, weight, height, and reasonable birth date on it (I was a 6’3 210 lbs white guy 10 years older than his black 5’6 140 lbs info).
To make a really long story short, the seafood place mailed the check cashing card he applied for to my address. I noticed this and opened the envelope with an opener and saw “my” signature in his handwriting (which I recognized from the bank’s *.jpeg images of canceled checks) on this physical piece of paper. I knew better than to physically touch the thing.
I dumped the card into a sandwich baggie and gave it to the State Trooper who was handling the case.
Just an anecdote. But at least I didn’t touch the card and they did get identifiable prints off it–not only readable prints, but they could actually find a match for them, however they do it (but probably not in CSI time), to a known check forger.
Did I mention this happened 15 years ago? I lived inside the Capital Beltway and 9/11 and the Senate anthrax attacks had just occurred (I lived just a few miles from the Post Office the Senate letters went through).
dasmoocher’s stolen checks were not exactly a priority of the local labs at the time.
Many months later they did process the card and got hits to a known forger. The State Trooper in charge called me to say “Yes, we’ve identified the perpetrator and I’ve issued an arrest warrant. But, there’s already three other warrants outstanding on him, so, ya know…”
Especially dumb in this case, since the guy was supposedly a high-powered California attorney.
I really like the three CSIs, and for some reason I started working through the episodes a couple of weeks ago after a few years hiatus.
But it’s always painfully clear that it is entertainment. And that’s not even considering the alternate-universe science (an alternate universe stuck with flip phones)
My biggest beef with these programs is that the main CSI crew is involved in everything end-to-end.
I highly doubt that science nerds from the office would ever go on a raid wearing body armor. Why do they always have the main actors rushing in with guns drawn when they have plenty of “uniforms” available for that?
In a similar vein, why don’t they ever bring in special guests as subject matter experts? I would love to see them bring in a true arson investigator character for a fire, and watch as the expert in the field explains to Gus / Mac / Horatio how to interpret the fire evidence.
And finally, I grow weary of all of the drama that the writers pound into each of the main characters’ lives. No, it is not believable that each character has been victimized multiple times and has family members who are all somehow targeted by drug kingpins or are involved in really bad stuff. Life is rough if someone in your family is a TV show cop.
But I still watch the show!
A question I’ve always puzzled over:
“We have a match to the victim’s dental records!”
What if, like many Americans, one doesn’t go to the dentist often (or ever)? How would you find records if, like me, tooth work is done sporadically and in different states?
I think we’ve talked about the use of dental records in an earlier thread. They’re useful mainly for confirming a suspected identification. In other words, you have other reasons to suspect that the otherwise unidentifiable victim is someone in particular, so you get that someone in particular’s dental records to confirm whether the victim is that someone in particular.