Crime Scene Management: Integrity of the Crime Scene

Crime scene management is a very important skill especially in the investigation as the evidence in the crime will provide a clear picture of what happened in the court. This evidence will paint a picture that composes the testimony from the witnesses, exhibits, photographs, analysis, and others. There are four issues in crime scene management and these are:

1. Taking notes of the data
2. Securing the place and the scene
3. Managing the evidence
4. Scaling the investigation to the event

For today’s discussion, we will focus on how to secure the place and the scene after a crime or a homicide happens. If you own a property, and you end up entangled with situations like this, it is better that you know the processes that involve in the investigation and cleaning up after the crime scene so you will be guided of what to do.

Securing the Place and the Scene

Securing the place and the scene is an important aspect of crime scene management. This means that the authorities need to protect the integrity of the crime scene and this involves different processes and that fall under the category of Task of STAIR tool. The following are things that the investigator needs to do: identifying, collecting, preserving, and protecting the evidence to ensure that this evidence will be accepted in the court. To do this, they will:

• Lockdown the crime scene to protect it from intentional and unintentional manipulation – this means the all activities that are happening inside the crime scene is stopped because this might contaminate the evidence, like the witnesses, victims, and responders, or even the suspect may still be inside the crime scene and their actions ad activities could manipulate the evidence.
• Set up some perimeters for the crime scene – the perimeter defines the range of the crime scene in terms of physical distance including the entry and exit points. Once the perimeter has been set and established, the place I locked down and no unauthorized person is allowed to enter the crime scene
• Establish a path of contamination – after setting up everything, the investigators will need to take note of the amount of contamination that the people inside the crime scene have done, as this will create a baseline of existing contamination in the crime scene.
• Establish the security of the crime scene – a perimeter tape will not be enough and so, there will be authorities and police offer who would need to secure the area as well as search team members, forensic specialists, assigned investigators, and the coroner.

Note: after the crime scene and the investigation, it is important that you still do not touch anything in your property even if all the authorities have already left and everything is getting back to normal. We recommend that you hire crime management BioHazmat to save yourself from being contaminated with something unknown. This includes some diseases and bacterial infection especially when there have been bodily fluids such as urine, blood, etc., that are left in the crime scene. Cleaning up the area by yourself is not advised.