Crime scene and duties of a police officer at a crime scene

When a crime is reported to the police, the initial police actions on arrival usually are:

• to arrest the perpetrators of the crime, if possible;

• to give first aid if required, protect the crime scene, question witnesses at the scene;

• to make a preliminary search for, recording and preserving of, and delivery of pertinent physical evidence to a laboratory.

The investigating process very often depends on the discovery of physical evidence found at the scene. The correct handling of any criminal evidence involves the vital need for proper collection and identification of all articles of interest.

Proper handling means to prevent careless destruction of any evi­dence, to establish and maintain the chain of evidence and to prevent, wherever possible, the addition of any extraneous data to evidence al­ready collected.

A competent search of a crime scene requires that an officer should have specialized training, an understanding of basic procedures, good knowledge of the «why» of certain actions, and close attention to detail in carrying them out.

To satisfy the legal requirements concerning physical evidence the investigator must be able to

• identify each article of evidence, even months after he collected it;

• describe the exact location of the item at the time it was col­lected,

• prove that from the moment of its collection until it was pre­sented court, the evidence was continuously in proper custody,

• describe changes that have occurred in the evidence between the time of its collection and its presentation in court.

Text 8: Read and translate the text:

Fingerprints

The highly individual patterns of the ridges are constant tor the whole of life and cannot be altered except by the destruction of the skin, but with the growth of fresh skin, the original pattern returns.

Here is the table which lays down a rule of ridge counts as ap­plicable to ages:

New-born child 15—18 ridges

Age 8 — 10 years 13 ridges

Age 13 — 14 years 12 ridges

Over 14 years 9—10 ridges

20 years (large hands) 6 — 7 ridges

It is a general belief that most criminals wear gloves; in actual practice a surprising number of them fail to do so.

There are three main classes of chains impressions, the most im­portant being the latent print. This is generally invisible to the naked eye and is generally made by the finger ball which impresses the papil­lary lines on an object with the aid of small amounts of sweat, body grease, and dirt. If the hands are very clean and cold, latent prints are unlikely to be made on any but good surfaces such as glass.

The second class comprises visible prints which need little ex­planation, for here dirt, blood, etc., on the fingertip will enable the print to be made. Prints of the type are infrequently found and they could be the result of haste or inattention.

A third class is the plastic print where a negative cast of the print is made on a so-called plastic object.

The life of the impression is variable and is governed by various factors, but given a hard protected surface unlikely to be touched, a print is almost permanent.

If the visible print cannot be wholly or partially removed to the place of examination, photography is the first answer. Once the record is made, it then becomes the requisite of the expert.

The latent print has a variety of techniques, applicable to the me­dium under examination. Dusting for prints is the automatic pre­requisite in the search for latent prints. Generally speaking, the use of an appropriate powder for development comes first, and in theory the sort of powder used is not important providing it is fine-grained in quality. A print on white objects, for example, would be dusted with black powder. On dark objects white powder is used.

The possibility that the weapons of science can be turned against itself by the forging of fingerprints cannot be discounted since this factor arises every now and again. At least forgery is of theoretical importance.

To make a facsimile of a fingerprint for some purpose would not be difficult, but it becomes a very different matter when it is put into practical use as a forgery.

It is certainly possible to make a fingerprint by means of a copy executed in rubber, for example, and get from it a visible print, but the forged fingerprint does not stand up to expert examination. Even if it were possible, it is easily detectable with the use of a good hand-lens when the ridges show up at once as artificial. In brief, a forgery cannot be achieved in such a manner that it will successfully pass the examina­tion of a dactyloscopic expert. The chief weapon against such attempts at deceit is, basically the photographic enlargement.

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