New animal CSI unit unveiled to aid animal victims - WDBO Local News on wdbo.com

New animal CSI unit unveiled to aid animal victims - WDBO Local News on wdbo.com

New animal CSI unit unveiled to aid animal victims

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WDBO Staff

@ May 13, 2010 12:48 PM Permalink | Comments (0)

By Emily Cassulo
It's a Crime Scene Investigation unit, but for animals.
On Wednesday night, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) unveiled what it calls its newest mobile "Animal CSI" response vehicle at the third annual Veterinary Forensic Sciences Conference held here in Orlando.
The purpose of this customized 2010 Subaru Outback is to help collect and process evidence at animal crime scenes. Dr. Melinda Merck, Senior Director of Veterinary Forensics at the ASPCA, said that they had it made not necessarily because there's an increase in animal cruelty, but because more people are reporting it and more law enforcement are getting involved.
She told WDBO that they've had a unit similar to this new Subaru before.
"I have a larger 26-foot-long CSI unit that was donated in 2007 to the ASPCA, but we needed a smaller unit so we could reach some of the crime scenes where we can't always get the bigger unit back there," she said. "We needed something that could carry people, supplies and evidence."
Dr. Merck said the older unit was primarily used to examine animals, but the new response vehicle focuses more on examining evidence from animal crime scenes.
"The one [older] unit wasn't enough," she said.
The modified unit is unique and gives them more flexibility. It has everything needed to respond to animal crime - special lighting, a radio, computer, exam table, roof rack and refrigerator to store evidence.
The new unit will be based out of Gainesville, home to ASPCA's other crime scene unit and veterinary forensics program, but it will primarily assist local agencies across the state.
For information on how to get involved with the ASPCA, visit the non-profit organization's website at www.aspca.org.

What goes on inside the Florence Police Department's Crime Scene Unit and Evidence Division | SCNow

What goes on inside the Florence Police Department's Crime Scene Unit and Evidence Division | SCNow

By Jamie Rogers | Morning News Reporter
Published: May 16, 2010
Updated: May 17, 2010

Below the main level of the Florence City-County Complex and isolated from the everyday hustle of government business is a room that breaks and makes criminal cases, exonerates and imprisons suspects and assures and casts doubt for jurors.

The Florence Police Department’s evidence room is in the basement of the complex and is part of the former jail and bookings intake area.

While patrol officers and crime scene investigators frequent the area, few are allowed inside the actual evidence room which is locked, gated and armed with an alarm, said Florence Police Sgt. Angela Becker.

She and Lt. Floyd Harrell are the only people allowed in the actual evidence room, with the exception of the two top officers on the force: Florence Police Chief Anson Shells and Inspector Allen Heidler, said Becker, who is the sergeant over evidence and property.

“Mainly this is for court purposes and for the chain of custody, which is the very important aspect of someone’s trial,” she said. “When an officer logs in evidence, it is strictly under our control, no matter what the evidence is.

“This is best. The less people that have access to the evidence, then the less someone can say someone tampered with the evidence.”

Everything from swords to cases of beer are being held in the evidence room, Becker said. While certain materials are eventually destroyed or sold at a police auction, some evidence has been around more than 30 years.

Materials from homicides are usually kept the longest because of the appeals process for convicted felons and because some pieces are evidence in death penalty cases, she said.

“The oldest is probably from 1979 and 1981. It’s an unsolved homicide,” she said.

While Becker said she hasn’t seen any apparitions in the evidence room, she sometimes gets a funny feeling when she walks through the area where homicide evidence is kept.

“I don’t know, it’s just eerie,” she said.

In 2008, when police kept bringing in articles of clothing and other evidence from the unearthed bodies of 42-year-old Joretha Lynn Kirk and 51-year-old Rachel Samuel, Becker said she felt that same eerie feeling. The two women were killed, then buried behind a Gaillard Street home in September 2008.

All evidence is turned in at the end of an officers’ shift, as they are not allowed to take home evidence or leave it in their cars.

Each officer makes a log in the evidence book and locks the evidence in lockers in the evidence holding room, to which only Becker and Harrell have keys. From there it’s moved into the evidence room, she said.

All drugs and narcotics have to be sent to the State Law Enforcement Division in Columbia for analysis.

“And it has be secured, that’s another part of the chain of custody. They put it in a plastic bag, (the officer) is the only one that seals it, I can’t even seal it and I can’t take it out,” Becker said.

Drugs stay in the evidence room until someone from the Florence Police Crime Scene Unit delivers it to SLED.

At some point, it is sent back to Florence where it is kept until a case comes to court, which can take several years, she said.

The drug area, like the homicide area, has a distinctive smell, Becker said. After a court case, most drug evidence is destroyed.

Guns in evidence are taken to a local steel mill where they are melted and destroyed, Becker said.

Citizens try to liken the job to the CBS television series “CSI: Miami,” but the officers who actually work in the Florence crime scene unit say it’s not quite the same and not even close to being the way it’s portrayed in Hollywood.

“We might handle something as minor as someone breaking into a car or handling an extreme scene such a homicide,” Florence Police Crime Scene Unit Investigator Shannon Hill said. “We handle armed robberies, burglaries — basically whatever the investigator needs. We’re like a tool in his toolbox.”

The four-man squad also uses advanced computer equipment to analyze surveillance video and audio in missing persons and crime cases.

The unit conducts chemical analysis on substances thought to be marijuana, said Florence Police Cpl. Bo Myers, who is also a member of the unit.

Myers and Hill said the unit members work in concert and processes a crime scene in a procedural manner.

During homicide investigations, they coordinate with EMS workers and first responders to establish what happened at a scene, Myers said.

“We like to talk to EMS to just see how the body was positioned to see what different things were around it,” he said. “Initially something may look out of place to us, but (EMS) may have rolled body just to do what they need to.”

Every death scene is treated as a homicide until they discover evidence that leads them to believe otherwise, Myers said.

“This lets us be more thorough,” Hill said. “We don’t want to miss anything. So we treat it as a homicide. We do a lot of that work with the coroner.”

It can take several hours to several days to process a scene.

“It has to do with what your mindset is,” Myers said. “It’s the blinder effect; you’ve got to work with your blinders on. You’ve got to be able to focus.”

There are some cases that affect the crime scene unit members more than others and there are cases that cause them to lose sleep at night, Myers said.

But the members of the unit lean on each other for support outside the crime scene, he said.

“Everybody handles it in their own way. Some people make little jokes, some people get real quiet,” Hill said. “It’s like a fireman, I guess you wonder why he goes into burning building. He does it cause that’s his job.”

“We’ve been chosen for the position we’re in. Not everybody can do it,” Myers said. “Day to day, it’s not dramatic and glamorous at all.”

When cases are presented before a judge and jury, crime scene investigators encounter what is known as the “CSI effect,” Myers said.

They have to explain their jobs to jurors and sometimes convince them that it isn’t what they see on TV, he said.

The real crime scene techs find TV shows that portray their job laughable at times.

“They (actors) take a picture of a fingerprint with their camera and then they automatically get a report,” Myers said. “That’s the funny thing.”

“People think you can take a tube of plaster and insert it into a stab wound , give it a couple of minutes and pull it out and it’s the exact shape of the knife,” said Maj. Carlos Raines, who oversees

Florence police investigations. “That’s not true ... you’re going end up with a glob of whatever substance it is you stuck down there.”

Television crime scene programs are grossly exaggerated pieces of truth, Hill said.

Crime Scene Cross Training - Evidence Response Technicians

The April/May 2010 digital edition of Forensic Magazine just came out.  Another great article by Dick Warrington on the need for crime scene investigation cross training within police departments.  The manpower that it takes to process a crime scene can be overwhelming if a deparment only has one or two csi in their department.  Cross training other patrolmen to become Evidence Response Technicians (ERTs) is becoming a preferred method for solving csi manpower issues.  An added benefit, Mr. Warrington mentions is the potential linking of suspects & evidence across crimes.
Read the entire article at this link.

FSI: Fish Scene Investigator - Using DNA evidence to track species instead of perps

Metro Times - News+Views: FSI: Fish Scene Investigator

FSI: Fish Scene Investigator
Using DNA evidence to track species instead of perps

By Kari Lydersen

The test that detected Asian carp's environmental DNA, or eDNA, above the electric barrier in the Chicago waterways leading to Lake Michigan, was developed in the past year by New Zealand scientist Lindsay Chadderton and researchers at Notre Dame. They say this is the first time DNA testing has been used on such a scale to find evidence of invasive fish in fresh water, and they think their method will ultimately be used around the globe to detect invasive species and protect endangered ones.
In January 2007, the Nature Conservancy hired Chadderton, an aquatic ecologist, as the first director of aquatic invasive species for its Great Lakes Project, a program to rejuvenate and protect the ecosystem of the lakes. Chadderton had been working with invasive species for New Zealand's Department of Conservation, and soon after he arrived in the Midwest, he and a team from Notre Dame began experimenting with DNA detection. Now this technology has taken center stage in perhaps the most politically charged invasive species controversy ever to hit the Great Lakes region.

Kari Lydersen: How does the DNA test work?
Lindsay Chadderton: We go out, take between 60 and 100 two-liter water samples, put them in coolers on ice to slow natural breakdown, and bring them back to the laboratory. Within 24 hours of collection, we filter each sample through really fine filter paper ... to remove any particles in the water, including any possible cells. Then we extract the DNA off the filter paper, using kits that break the cells open and release the DNA. We then use a centrifuge to take the liquid off, and that gives us a DNA extract. Then we amplify — sort of clone — the species-specific DNA we're looking for so we have enough to detect, and we run these on simple gels that allow us to compare each sample with controls that contain the target DNA.
Lydersen: The Army Corps of Engineers and state officials have repeatedly stated that no Asian carp have been found above the electric barrier. How confident are you of the DNA tests?
Chadderton: We are confident that our results are real, and the more testing we do, [the more] this confidence increases. In the criminal justice system, we regularly use DNA to place people at the scene of a crime. People, like other animals, shed DNA into the environment — skin, hair, bodily fluids. Carp do the same thing — DNA cells associated with mucus or sloughed off from the gills, attached to scales, shed from the gut system, and contained in feces and urine. Once those cells are released into the water they are held in suspension for some time and we are simply collecting them in the water column. We're looking for evidence of a species, instead of individuals like you do with people, but the principles are the same.
[One] thing that gives us confidence is the fact we can go back to certain places and repeatedly detect DNA. The distribution is consistent with the movement of fish. For example, the number of positive samples decreases as we get closer to the barrier. That's consistent with an upstream invasion.
Lydersen: Why are the Asian carp moving past the barrier at all? They don't know there's good habitat farther on, do they?
Chadderton: It's probably just an innate sense. These fish prefer slow-flowing water and the canal is probably not particularly good habitat for them. It's like a box, there are not a lot of places to get out of the current so we'd expect these fish to continue pushing up through the system searching for better food or habitat. With any population there are dispersers that keep moving and other animals that hang around. For one thing, if you're at the front of the pack there might be more food. If you've got hundreds of thousands of individuals behind you all feeding in the same water, wouldn't you want to be up front?
Lydersen: When fish in the canal were poisoned in December, just south of the electric barrier, just one dead Asian carp was found. Why was that, if there are so many Asian carp in the system?
Chadderton: We didn't expect to see many — if any — Asian carp, as when they are killed by rotenone they sink. It was cold, which makes them slower to decompose and bloat and float. There were apparently large numbers of fish on the bottom being fed on by crayfish and other invertebrates not affected by the fish poison. All these conditions would have acted to prevent the fish floating to the surface.
Lydersen: You've spoken of using a "Judas carp" to find Asian carp already past the barrier and possibly in Lake Michigan. What is it?
Chadderton: We think some fish have gotten into Lake Michigan — it's the most plausible explanation for what we have found. So, if we want to stop Asian carp, we need to track them down and prevent them from spawning. One way would be to use Judas fish. These are fish with a transmitter attached to them. You follow the Judas fish around, and once it's hanging out you encircle the area and fish it out or treat it [with rotenone or another poison]. The technique is used to control invasive species around the world. The Aussies have used it very successfully to control and almost eradicate common carp in two lakes in Tasmania. We need to remove the Asian carp between the barrier and the Great Lakes, and we could use the Judas fish to locate areas to treat.
Lydersen: Do you think we could actually find the probably very few Asian carp in Lake Michigan?
Chadderton: When the carp are in the lake, they have an Achilles' heel — they need long distances of running water to successfully spawn. So while it's going to be hard to find them in the lake itself, the fact they will likely need to go inland and upstream to spawn may make the search easier. There's a lot we can learn from the sea lamprey control program, which is the poster child of integrated aquatic pest management. [The government spends about $18 million a year fighting invasive sea lampreys, which latch on to Great Lakes fish and suck their blood. Fishery managers employ various barriers on Great Lakes streams to block and capture lamprey after they move inland to breed. They also poison the larvae and release thousands of sterile male lampreys to mate with the females.]
Lydersen: Could you apply rotenone to all the canals and rivers leading into the lake?
Chadderton: Treating the whole thing would be something you'd want to explore. There are other methods you could use, like electrofishing or seining. But treating the waterway with a fish poison like rotenone is the only surefire way of making sure you got them all.
Lydersen: Do you still have faith in the electric barrier?
Chadderton: It's a numbers game — the more fish that get into the lake, the greater likelihood we will see successful establishment. We know the largest numbers of fish are still below the barrier and we need to keep them there. Over the last two to three years the upper barrier has been taken down for maintenance on at least one occasion, on the assumption Asian carp weren't present. But Chris [Jerde, from Notre Dame] estimated the carp probably made it to right below the barrier two to three years ago, and it seems possible that during the 2008 maintenance operations fish got through.
Lydersen: You are pretty certain Asian carp are in Lake Michigan. Does that mean the worst fears of environmental groups — that the lake will be taken over by Asian carp — will come true?
Chadderton: It's definitely not game over. We've got some amount of time. There's got to be enough fish, they've got to find each other, they've got to find suitable spawning habitat, their eggs have to survive and hatch, the larvae have to survive. At each stage all sorts of things could go wrong, there's still lots of uncertainty.
If we look at invasion history around the U.S. and the world, invasive species often don't do what we expect. They may not end up being more than a nuisance, but they could conversely end up being a disaster. We won't know until it happens, at which stage it's too late. It seems incredibly risky or foolhardy to let these things into the Great Lakes unchecked. We know enough about them to be really concerned about the potential consequences. There is too much at stake. And we never really know what exactly is going to happen until it happens.
Lydersen: Since Lake Michigan has relatively sparse plankton and Asian carp need faster-moving water to spawn, it doesn't sound like it's even an ideal habitat for them.
Chadderton: In their native range, they prefer slow-flowing or standing water, like lakes — except for when spawning. The big issue is whether there is enough food. This is likely to vary across each of the Great Lakes, and some recent work suggests that in the open water of most lakes there isn't enough food. But that research work didn't take into account all possible food sources — like the larvae of [invasive] zebra and quagga mussels. Everybody generally accepts that Asian carp are probably likely to do well in Lake Erie and in embayments in Lake Michigan like Green Bay.
Lydersen: They've already been found in Lake Erie, right?
Chadderton: About five bighead carp have been found in Lake Erie over the last 14 or so years. The assumption is these fish represent individual releases. At least two of them were in really good condition — they were fat and large.

Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based freelancer, author and journalism instructor. Her latest book Revolt on Goose Island (Melville House) chronicled the 2008 Republic Windows factory occupation. A longer version of this interview originally appeared in Chicago Reader.

Failed Bombing Attempt in New York City's Times Square

Text came in at one last night, waking me out of my light sleep.  Ding Ding next to my head. Bomb Attempt in New York City at Times Square. I just took my daughter there last week for a much needed break from school.  As I strolled through the crowded streets, it's always in the back of my mind that crowded places could spell trouble. You never think it's really going to happen.

Unbelievably sick people in this world!  In keeping with the sentiment of the blog, the nature of our business and need to catch the creep that did this, I am linking to the US Dept. of Justice Guide to Explosion and Bombing Scene Investigation.   

As amateurish as it was, it can be easily replicated & copycatted in cities around the US. US Intelligence didn't catch this coming, so preventing it wasn't an option.  Catching the perp(s) will be key! Be prepared to investigate before they hit close to home.