In an otherwise serene East Tennessee valley, people detonate automobiles,
ignite
houses, and bury corpses in clandestine graves. These events happen regularly
here – three times a year – as the National Forensic Academy (NFA)
hones the skills of crime scene investigators with simulated crimes.
Jarrett Hallcox, the NFA’s program manager, says that the O.J. Simpson
trial triggered events that led to the creation of his institution. In the
fall of 2000, Phil Keith, who served as Chief of the Knoxville Police Department
at the time, had been concerned about the mishandling of evidence during the
Simpson trial. He approached the University of Tennessee with a proposal for
a training program that would raise the level of professionalism and standardize
crime scene investigation.
Since 2001, the academy has offered ten-week, intensive education sessions
in January, May, and September. “There are not a lot of places where an
individual can go for soup to nuts training,” Hallcox says. Admission can
be highly competitive; the NFA limits class size to 16 students. To meet the
basic requirement for entry into the program, an applicant must be an investigator
or crime scene technician currently employed by a law enforcement agency.
“Whether
you are a veteran or new,” says Hallcox, “there’s nowhere else
that you can go to be immersed for ten weeks.” Program participants do
get submerged in a multitude of investigative techniques, such as bloodstain
pattern analysis, firearm and toolmark identification, DNA analysis, latent fingerprint
processing, death investigation, trace evidence study, arson investigation, and
forensic ballistics (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Reconstructing a mock crime from blood spatter.
Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
FROM THE CLASSROOM, TO THE FIELD, TO HELL (SCENES)
Students spend about 40 percent of their time in classroom and lab activities.
Although the syllabus covers certain essential topics, details vary from
session to session.
“We have an organic class,” Hallcox says. “Each
class is different. Each class has new opportunities.”
These opportunities
arise from the students’ varied experiences and knowledge, as well
as new ideas that instructors infuse into their classes. “Our instructors
are practitioners in the field,” says Hallcox, “so they run into
new ways to collect evidence and process evidence, and they introduce these at
the academy.” Students also have the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge
forensic technology under development at nearby Oakridge National Laboratories.
During the first three weeks, instructors teach crime scene management methods,
crime scene photography, and techniques for collecting impression evidence. Field
training exercises, which make up the bulk of the academy’s program, begin
during the third week. At this time, students use their crime scene management
skills to work a mock crime scene, searching for and collecting planted evidence,
and preserving the scene with photos and sketches (Figure 2). The mock crime
scenes get more complicated from then on.
In the following weeks, students observe how houses and cars burn and then
learn methods of evidence collection and preservation at the scene of a fire.
A certified
bomb technician sets up mock crime scenes involving a vehicle explosion and the
effects of a pipe bomb (Figure 3). In another scenario, students document and
analyze staged bloodstain evidence in a mock bloody crime scene. And then, there’s
the Body Farm.
Figure 2. Gathering evidence at a mock crime scene.
Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
Figure 3. NFA students examine the effects of a bomb.
Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
“Without a doubt, the most interesting experience at the
academy was during the week of Forensic Anthropology,” says NFA graduate
Mark H. Hanf, a detective with the Seattle Police Department/CSI Unit. “We
were able to work at the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research
Facility, also known as the Body Farm,” he says. “There is no other
place like it!” Hanf is correct. The facility is the only one of its kind
in the world.
Located behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center, the Outdoor Anthropological
Research Facility covers little more than two acres. Over 25 years ago, world-renowned
forensic anthropologist Dr. William Bass started the facility to study the
processes and timing of postmortem decay. The results aid investigators to
establish the
time-since-death of human remains. Corpses, left under trees, submerged in
water, or buried underground, typically decompose through a 12-month cycle.
Afterwards,
the skeletons are collected, measured for a forensic database, and stored
in the Anthropology Department’s depository, one of the world’s
largest skeleton collections.
Use of the facility has expanded beyond its
original purpose. Today, the Body Farm aids in the development and testing
of new forensic technologies, serves as a site to train cadaver dogs
and their handlers, and provides a singular opportunity for National Forensic
Academy students.
At the Body Farm, Hanf says, students “put the lessons we learned
into practice by conducting bone scatter and body recovery exercises.” The
bone scatter search illustrates how animals and weather disperse the remains
of a decomposing body. Several months before a class arrives, faculty members
scatter bones, shell casings, pieces of clothing, and other evidence. Students
typically need about eight hours to meticulously search the grounds, mark
locations of evidence, photograph, and bag their findings. In the body
recovery exercise, students must locate a clandestine grave with “evidence” helpfully
left by a previous class.
Before graduating, students investigate an elaborate mock crime scene that
incorporates a number of elements from the lessons. These have become known
as “Hell Scenes” (Figure 4).
In July 2005, students worked
on an elaborate Hell Scene based on an ill-fated drug deal. Author and
academy benefactor Patricia Cornwell arranged for a helicopter to drop
an aircraft fuselage 150 feet onto an open field. On the ground, the staff
detonated a briefcase bomb on the plane and conjured up a suicide bomber.
Academy faculty had collaborated with Josh Wolcott, a graduate assistant
in the University of Tennessee School of Art sculpture program, to create
the unique, life-like dummies that populated the wrecked plane and that
participated in the staged suicide bomb scenario. These dummies contain
plaster bones and ordinance gelatin, normally used to reproduce tissue
consistency in ballistic tests.
One of the academy’s forensic training
dummies starred in a 2006 Hell Scene. This time, the faculty used a helicopter
to drop a dummy from several hundred feet. Students examined the hapless
dummy to learn the probable effects of such a fall on the human body (Figure
5). In a wooded area, the students searched for simulated bodies lying
in shallow graves and hunted evidence, including fingerprints, shoe prints,
tire tracks, bullet holes, weapons, and bloodstains (Figure 6).
Figure 4. A student looks for fingerprints during a 2006 Hell
Scene exercise. Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
Figure 5. Students examine a dummy released from a helicop ter during a
2006
Hell Scene exercise. Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
Figure 6. Students map a burial site during a 2006 Hell Scene
exercise. Courtesy of the National Forensic Academy.
RIPPLE EFFECTS OF NFA TRAINING
After ten rigorous weeks capped with a Hell Scene, what does a graduate take
back to work?
“I feel that no matter how small or large a department that an individual
comes from, or how much experience that they may have,” says Hanf, “each
NFA graduate is guaranteed to walk away with both the knowledge and various
techniques that will assist them in their work.” Hanf says that the academy
not only changed his own approach to crime scene analysis, but also changed
the way that his department conducts business.
“Prior to my graduation
from the NFA,” he says, “the Seattle Police Department depended
on the use of all of its detectives to be able to provide the expertise in
the processing of major crime scenes.” After Hanf returned from the academy,
his department decided to create a dedicated crime scene division. Hanf used
his academy experience to help his department to develop the Crime Scene Investigations
Unit. The specialized division, he says, not only fosters expertise in crime
scene processing, but also allows “all of the other detectives to have
more time in conducting their normal follow-up responsibilities and to quickly
track down potential leads in a case.”
To date, the Duluth Police Department
has four academy graduates. “[We] know that we will be able to work through
most any situation,” says NFA graduate Lieutenant Eric Rish. “I
also see us as a great resource,” he says, “for our department
as well as the region.”
“It was truly ten weeks of skill building
and networking,” Rish says about his academy experience. He brings up
an important point. Students not only meet expert instructors, who they consult
later on, but also law enforcement professionals from varied organizations.
The NFA’s students include police officers, sheriff’s deputies,
FBI agents, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division agents, state troopers,
and Texas Rangers.
Another NFA success story flourishes across the country. The Georgia Bureau
of Investigation has sent 17 Special Agents to the academy. Two more agents
planned to attend the January 2007 class.
“The Georgia
Bureau of Investigation,” says GBI Director Vernon M. Keenan, “has
incorporated the National Forensic Academy as basic training for all our Crime
Scene Specialists.” Their academy graduates also attend annual retraining
sessions. “We believe it is in our interest,”
Keenan says, “to
provide those agents who perform crime scene work on a daily basis with the
most current and innovative skills available.” Keenan says that NFA training
supports an academy graduate’s expert credentials when testifying in
court, and benefits law enforcement personnel who did not get to attend the
NFA. The academy program, he says, “has allowed the GBI to utilize the
Crime Scene Specialists to train our basic agent classes and provide additional
on the job training to the agents whenever they are exposed to a crime scene.” NFA
graduates also provide training in crime scene skills to the state’s
prosecuting attorneys in continuing education programs.
Lieutenant Warren Hamlin
of the Knoxville Police Department’s Criminal Investigations/Forensic
Unit says that his organization has greatly benefited by having ten NFA graduates.
Increased efficiency is one advantage of the academy’s program. “We
are able to communicate and work together, having the same knowledge and training,” says
Hamlin. The NFA graduates also have expanded the evidence collection and processing
services available to the department’s officers and investigators.
“Everyone
that has gone to the training,” Hamlin says, “has been able to bring
something back to everyone else in the unit.” Like Keenan, Ham-lin sees
academy graduates pass on their NFA experiences. “Our graduates not only
teach and help each other with new skills,” says Hamlin, “but others
in our department as well.” NFA graduates instruct new officers on crime
scene preservation and offer training to experienced officers and investigators
during annual in-service classes. Hamlin’s Forensic Unit also provides
classes to the Knoxville Police Department’s Citizen Police Academy, as
well as numerous community and school groups throughout the year. “We try
to pass on our knowledge of crime scene investigation to as many as possible,” he
says.
Hailing from almost every state in the country, NFA graduates take their
academy experiences back to their organizations. In doing so, they help to
realize Hallcox’s vision of the NFA: “We are standardizing practices of the
proper collection, preservation, and submission of evidence collected at a crime
scene.”
Enhancing professionalism in crime scene analysis generates its
own ripple effect. “Because of the enhanced skills of our Crime Scene Specialists
and their attendance at the National Forensic Academy,” Keenan says, “we
have provided our customer base, the law enforcement agencies of Georgia, and
therefore the citizens of Georgia, with the best possible crime scene resource
available.”
Phillip Jones is a freelance writer and member of the National Science
Writers Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
He can be
reached at philljones@biotech-writer.com.
