A Heart of Iron

A Taste of Copper

It's always hard finding a good parking space at a crime scene.

That is as true a statement as you will ever hear in law-enforcement. Everybody wants to see a dead body. That is just the nature of those left behind. We are fascinated with death. Dead bodies both scare and excite us. But it's not just death. We will all likely see a dead body at some point in our lives. But very few of us will see a murder victim. The moment those crime scene tapes go up everyone wants to know what's behind them. They want to see what few ever have permission to see firsthand. They want to know what happened and why.

So do I.

People always ask me why police rush to a call of a murder. They argue that the victim is dead and is not going to get any better so why rush and risk killing someone along the way? My obvious answer is that solving a crime is dependent on getting the best untainted evidence we can possibly get. In order to do that we have to minimize the amount of contamination by minimizing the number of people contaminating it. That, of course, means getting there first. Add to that the very real possibility that the suspect may still be at or close to the scene and we have every reason to get there as soon as possible.

The truth is, though, we just like to drive fast. There is no better feeling than racing past people on the road without the fear of getting in trouble. It's just the way we are. If we could drive everywhere with lights and sirens blaring, we would. It's in our DNA.

At the crime scene, the natural parking protocol is always the same. The rookies will have gotten there first because they want to see their first dead body and will have taken up all the prime parking area. They will have parked too damn close and will have destroyed any evidence the suspect may have left behind at the front parking are where the crime occurred.

They haven't seen as many dead bodies as the rest of us and are understandably much more interested at the sight of one. They want to see the body first. They know they need to get there first to have the best chance to see the body before they are sent off to do something boring like establish a perimeter or canvas for witnesses.

By the time I pulled up to the crime scene, parking was at a premium. I had to park across the street in a grassy, muddy field (like everyone else should have). About a half a dozen police units and a couple of unmarked ones were already at the scene and the crime tape was already up. A perimeter was set up around the compound and people that were there working at the location had been removed from the property and separated, awaiting identification and interview.

The job of the first officers on the scene is always to clear and secure it. They have the difficult and dangerous job of making sure the suspect is not still on the scene without tainting too much of the evidence the suspect might have left behind. Once they've searched the scene for the suspect they then pull back and secure it and wait for the investigation division. They also try to locate the reporting party if there is one on scene. What they don't poke around and pick up stuff like you see on TV. They don't carry little plastic baggies with them marked "evidence" and just haphazardly throw things in it. Things need to be photographed before they are picked up. They need to be inventoried. Things never really get going until you see the people with the cameras, little orange cones, and disposable blue shoe covers on their feet show up.

The shoe covers though, are just for show. By the time they get there everyone has already trampled over every inch of the crime scene and surrounding area. They just wear them so they can testify in court that they didn't do any trampling themselves. Evidence, if it existed at all, is now stuck to the bottom of about a dozen police officer's spit shined black ankle top military style boots that have trampled the area long before I even get there. Don't let any stupid CSI show tell you different. A crime scene is nearly always 50% what the victim left behind, 50% of what the first responders left behind, and 5% what the suspect left behind (I was never good at math). This is all assuming, of course, that the suspect was someone unknown to the location.