Suppose that you are investigating a routine break-and-enter scene. It appears t

Question

Suppose that you are investigating a routine break-and-enter scene. It appears that a suspect broke a window to gain entry to the house and subsequently let others in through the front door. The following evidence was found.  

Glass fragments from the broken window

Dried blood found on the window sill

Hairs found within the home

Fibres found caught on the door frame of the house

Using point form describe the collection procedure for each piece of evidence listed above. In addition, where appropriate, you should state whether the evidence would exhibit class or individual characteristics and indicate which department of the Center of Forensic Sciences you would send the evidence to for analysis.

Finally, which of the evidence pieces would require control/reference samples? Explain your reasoning for requesting control/reference samples and how they would be collected.

Explanation / Answer

Collection procedure from a crime scene: In such cases of robbery, murder or any other incidents, the crime scenes are unique in their measure. So each investigation is unique, and communicating scene information is thus required to investigate.

Walking through crime scene include crime officers and investigators to pick certain specific evidences, they evaluate the crime scene and plan a process of collection, then noting down the location and the possible objects, determining if any additional equipment of personal blood spatter or hair strings are available, then recording the scene and further processing.

For biological evidences like Blood smear or hair strings and even the fibres found in the door they use a marker for the area they are taking the sample, documenting the substance, taking it in a sealed bag with latex or nitrite gloves and forceps, brass or spatula, swabs for blood samples, paper bags or plastic bags, sometimes some power which would be able to remove the stain is used.

Here in this scenario the class characteristics are those which can be measurable of an item that indicates a restricted group source. For example- Blood stain.

Even the individual characteristics are like could be produced by an object by use, or corrosion, for example- DNA profile from a blood stain.

In Forensic sciences there is a photography unit to send the evidences at the crime scene and at suspects location, then there is latent Fingerprint Unit where we can send the fingerprints, and the fibres and hair found on the scene ‘ Trace evidence department’ would take care of that, also for the blood stains there is laboratory called the ‘DNA and serology department’ would be the best place to process the samples.

Based on the evidences the blood sample and the hair strings are the most proven useful evidences, from there we can extract the DNA. DNA in forensic evidences plays a major role to identify a suspect, after the DNA is identifies we can then run a test based on the crime branch database and matching with the profiles and the suspect.

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