The Five Most Destructive Elements to a Crime Scene

H.W. “Rus” Ruslander, S.C.S.A.

1. Police Officers

2. Fire/Rescue Personnel

3. The Public

4. The Weather

5. Family members

Police officers, when at the scene of a recently killed individual, will flock in to view the body and the scene. This “herd” of people tromping through the scene will wreak havoc with the crime scene. Ask those Officers how quickly they would enter the scene of a severely decomposed body?

Fire/Rescue personnel will be only slightly less destructive. If the medics are the only ones inside a scene, they try to be as careful as possible. Using only the minimum amount of medical appliances and equipment and usually cleaning up the packaging materials as they go. However, their exodus through the scene still causes the destruction of vital evidence.

The general public in the pursuit of the satisfaction of their morbid curiosity, will try to view the scene and body, trampling evidence and possibly taking “souveniers” from the scene. Their close proximity and very presence can hinder and interfere with an investigation.

The weather, wind, rain, snow and heat all conspire to remove and or destroy evidence.

Finally, the family. Especially in the case of suicides and auto-erotic accidental deaths. The stigma of those deaths often prompts the family to alter the scene and remove appliances used to cause the death of their loved one. For this reason, they must be removed from the scene as quickly as possible or at very least, prevented from altering the scene. Even in cases of natural deaths, the families grief and need to cradle and comfort the dead loved one can create difficulties in the proper determination of cause or manner of death leading to the unnecessary and time consuming investigation of a natural event the has the appearance of an unnatural one.

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