And now for the continuation of mystery week with this wonderful article from my friend Lee Lofland.  Tune in tomorrow for another great blog, this one from thriller writer Donn Cortez.

Lee  is a former detective and author of Police Procedure and Investigation, A Guide For Writers, from Writer's Digest Books, a 2008 Macavity nominee for best nonfiction mystery.  He also writes and manages The Graveyard Shift, www.leelofland.com/wordpress/,  a blog about cops, forensics, and crime scene investigation.

Lee and legendary FBI criminal profiler Clint Van Zandt appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last Friday. You can listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93597384.

"CS...I Don't Think So" by Lee Lofland

Ah, to live the life of a crime-solving, danger-seeking CSI investigator. After all, the career offers the best in life—fancy clothes, expensive cars, fine dining, high-speed car chases, and high-tech, James-Bondish gadgets. We see all this on television, so it must be true, right?

Actually, the above description couldn’t be further from the truth. The sad reality is that most forensic laboratories don’t have enough funds or manpower to test all the evidence submitted to them by law-enforcement agencies. Many of the laboratories are understaffed, lack modern equipment, and are in sub par facilities.

Understaffed crime labs add to the already huge backlog of cases that many areas of the country are experiencing. A backlog of cases means evidence goes untested; untested evidence means that cases aren’t solved; unsolved cases mean bad guys are still out on the street committing crimes.

Television laboratories examine crime scene evidence immediately, and as a result cases are solved at breakneck speeds. Not so in real life. In August of this year, the Maryland State Police crime lab reported a shortage of twelve forensic scientists, a lack that caused much of their evidence to go untested. Another August report, this one from Jacksonville, Florida, states that the crime labs of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have evidence from approximately 1,000 cases on hold, waiting to be examined by their forensic scientists.

A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2005 shows that Tennessee’s crime labs are among the most backlogged laboratories in the country. In fact, the same report indicates that a typical crime lab has an average monthly backlog of approximately 400 cases. The 351 publicly funded laboratories in the U.S. ended the year 2002 with a backlog of over 500,000 requests for evidence examination.

Television shows us scientists who work almost exclusively on DNA evidence, firearm comparison, and blood and trace evidence analysis. Actually, scientists and other specialists who work in these laboratories spend only about 5% of their time examining DNA evidence (which by the way, normally takes a minimum of three days to examine, not the fifteen or twenty minutes TV suggests). The rest of their time is spent examining and testing other evidence, such as narcotics and fingerprints, with narcotics being the most often examined piece of evidence in nearly all crime labs.

A backlog in a forensic laboratory slows the entire judicial system. Criminals who are incarcerated while awaiting trial must often remain behind bars until the testing of the evidence from their crime-scenes is complete. This delay often results in continuances of their trials over and over again. The costs for this wait-time can be staggering. Attorneys and judges schedule court cases and police officers, witnesses, and other experts are often subpoenaed for those cases only to find out the case has been rescheduled. The list goes on.

Actors on CSI shows depict the life of crime-scene investigators as action-packed. In reality most of their time is spent in a well-lit (not darkened like we see on TV) laboratory or office. Most CSI technicians are not sworn police officers. They don’t question suspects, they don’t chase bad guys, and they don’t carry firearms. And, they don’t drive Hummers!

A real-life crime-scene investigator has an enormous responsibility. They are sometimes the people who discover the identity of a serial killer or a pedophile. Their jobs are an integral part of law-enforcement, but they’re not magic, and they shop at the bargain stores just like you and me.

If you want to see real police work on TV, do yourself a favor and tune in to a rerun of the Andy Griffith Show. Andy and Barney…now there were two top-notch CSI folks.

 

Author and party girl Marley Gibson is blogging today and chatting tonight over at The Knight Agency blog.  She's fun and fabulous.  Check her out!

I'm sitting right now at the conference table here at The Knight Agency offices, which are so perfect they might come off a movie set.  What a great environment!  I'm hoping to post some pictures and blog a bit about everything upon my return.