Zombie CSU (7 page)

The first responders have to establish a beachhead for the invasion of other specialists who will collect and process the evidence and investigate the crime. Witnesses need to be located, identified, and detained so that they don’t slip away with the words “I don’t want to get involved” ringing in their heads. Safe and easy access for emergency vehicles has to be established and identified.

As they get a handle on the situation, the first responders contact dispatch, which in turn notifies the correct follow-up detective unit so that detectives can make the scene. Detectives from the violent crimes
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division are requested. In violent crime, especially when there is an injured victim and the perpetrator is not only at large but also possibly armed and still in the vicinity, a lot of police support is sent. The idea is to put enough feet on the ground so that the presence of overwhelming force neutralizes any further criminal activity, and because the more eyes there are on a scene the more can be discovered.

The first responders also have to look for obvious evidence (a bloody knife, footprints, shell casings, etc.). Again, in our scenario, the officers also find the victim’s gun, a Glock 23C automatic pistol. They look for and identify ejected shell casings and determine that at least three shots have been fired.

Expert Witness

Joe McKinney, a homicide detective in San Antonio, Texas, and the author of
Dead City
(Pinnacle Books, 2006), a cops versus zombies novel, observes: “On my department—and from my experience, police work is more or less the same all over—detectives respond to scenes after the uniformed officers working patrol have the situation locked down. Patrol officers, you see, are basically jacks-of-all-trades. Their job is to respond to a situation first and contain it. Once the situation is contained, the patrol officer calls the appropriate follow-up unit that has been trained on all the particulars a given situation presents. For example, a murder, or a dead body found under suspicious circumstances, would warrant the officer to call Homicide. If the officers make a disturbance call in a fleabag motel and find a homemade meth lab, they call the Narcotics Unit. The key to police work in large and medium-sized departments is specialization.”

According to Sgt. Dennis Miller, a recently retired Los Angeles police officer, “We have all sorts of specialized detectives all the way up to our elite Robbery/Homicide dicks. Sometimes a case is passed up the chain of command because it’s going to become a ‘hobby,’ meaning that it’s going to take a lot longer than the regular detectives have time for. Most detectives are handling a lot of cases and luckily a lot of these get closed quickly because we’re not talking criminal masterminds here. Some bozo bashes his friend over the head with a golf club and then hides the club in his garage…that’s a quick close. But if the case gets political, or it gets big—a serial murder, something involving a celebrity, or something where there’s going to be a lot of forensics and a long court case, then RH steps in and handles it.”

But as Greg Dagnan points out, “Ninety Percent of the agencies in the U.S. do not have homicide units. Among those that do, this policy varies around the country. The best and most common practice is that those who initially investigated the crime know the most about the case and they should finish it. However, on a high-profile case with a lot of media attention, homicide may insist on taking over.”

The Zombie Factor

Everything starts with the crime scene, just as in the hunt for the cause of any kind of plague you need to go to the source. Our zombie assailant was described as wearing hospital scrubs, a T-shirt, and no shoes, and the attack happened in the parking lot of a medical research facility. Connections will be drawn.

As we go, we’re going to raise and then knock down a number of favorite zombie plague theories. The “radiation from a space probe” idea won’t hold water, as you’ll see; and though toxic waste contamination holds a little promise, it’s most reasonable to expect that the cause of the plague will, in fact, be a plague: a pathogen of some kind, and once the assailant has been found and examined, and the forensic evidence collected and analyzed, attention is very likely to turn back to some kind of medical source.

So our scenario, though not drawn from any specific zombie movie or book, is based on a “most likely” premise.

The first responders are on the scene; the process is in motion.

J
UST THE
F
ACTS

Securing the Crime Scene

Once the call has been made for backup and experts, the first responders still have work to do. Officers check all routes and ways into and out of the crime scene. This is necessary for several reasons, but principally to identify any route by which the suspect may have entered or left the scene by vehicle or foot and to make sure that all emergency routes will be available. At the same time the officers need to determine if there is any visible evidence on a route that could be contaminated or destroyed by responding official vehicles. Tire tracks, footprints, blood trails, shell casings, and other evidence is surprisingly fragile, and if the evidence is contaminated it can not only become useless (or suspect) as evidence useful for identifying the suspect, it can also become tainted and, therefore, useless in court.

In addition to police and forensics teams, others respond to crime scenes—violence will eventually draw crowds of reporters and rubbernecking civilians, all of whom are a threat to the integrity of the evidence and the process of investigation. Responding officers need to either erect barricades (generally using rolls of yellow crime scene tape) or arrange for wooden barricades to be brought in.

Some evidence is vulnerable to wind, trampling, precipitation, and other natural phenomena, so to protect and preserve the evidence, officers need to consider covering the evidence with plastic sheeting or other materials until the forensics team can get to it.

Responding officers start a log of the crime scene. This log includes as precise a chronology as possible that notes the location of the victim, witnesses, and (if any) suspects; information on the environmental conditions (rain, humidity, available light,
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etc.); the location of other objects (buildings, vehicles, etc.); visible possible evidence; location, identification and type of any arriving vehicles; ditto arriving personnel; and sketches of the crime scene that includes measurements and diagrams.

The officers set aside an area free from areas of evidence but close enough to serve as a base of operations for the crime scene. This area will always be within the barricaded restricted zone. One of the two
⁵
responding officers will act as a
point officer
, which means that he or she will brief incoming officers and specialists and work to limit the number of people crossing the evidence barrier lines. Not all police who arrive at a crime scene are permitted past the barriers because of the great need to protect the evidence.

A growing number of police departments around the country have begun issuing small but powerful digital flash cameras to all units in their areas so that the first responders can take photos of a completely pristine crime scene. This is especially useful when non–police emergency teams have to cross into the evidence area (firefighters, EMTs, etc.). The digital files can be quickly downloaded to the detective and forensic teams’ laptops and compared with the photos later taken by the official crime scene photographer.

If any evidence is removed by officers prior to the arrival of detectives and CSU teams, then each item would be put into a labeled bag and registered in the log along with precise notes indicating where the object was found.

As the CSU and detectives arrive, the first responders release the scene to the specialists. Part of this process is to provide detailed information to every person who has a need to know.

Expert Witness

Criminal Justice Professor Greg Dagnan discusses
⁶
how a crime scene is secured: “Here is how your agency can insure crime scene integrity while conserving manpower and budget dollars. First, level containment: The most basic and superficial containment, this is the crime scene tape that surrounds the crime scene itself. The first level is usually determined by responding patrol officers and perhaps modified slightly after the initial chaos dies or the investigators show up. Properly done, this level of containment surrounds all places where evidence might be, with a bit more for extra insurance. Make sure to remember possible areas of entrance and egress by the suspect as these are the most commonly forgotten when containing a crime scene. Regrettably, first level containment is all the protection most crime scenes get. As illustrated earlier, this just doesn’t cut it for the big scenes because everyone does everything inside the tape.

“Secondary containment: Though taking security to a higher level, this is not as complicated as it sounds. When crime scene processing officers arrive, they put up a second barrier of crime scene tape that completely surrounds the first level making a buffer zone. The secondary level solves several problems: Officers and Command staff have a place to meet where they cannot be bothered by civilians. Equipment can be stored in this secondary area and even makeshift desks made from folding tables can be erected. If you have some sort of crime scene vehicle it can be parked in this area and the area can serve as an established place for taking breaks and for crime scene trash. Your crime scene log is kept in this area and signed only by those who enter the first level or it can be signed by officers as they enter the second level. The latter option is still advantageous, as officers will not have to leave the scene for equipment and breaks, so there will be a lot less signing in and out. Hopefully there will be no evidence discovered in this level if the first level was properly placed. However, if you do find something (like a footwear or tire impression) outside the first level but still inside the second level, having it within a protected area could still save officers considerable explanations in court. If you cannot completely surround the first level with a second level, don’t worry; the idea is that you find some place that adjoins the first level for you to cordon off for your purposes. As long as the first level of containment is well secured, a small adjoining secondary level could meet your needs without it having to completely surround the first.