The Louisiana Delta Community College was the scene of a crime scene investigation workshop this week organized and hosted by the college’s forensic science department in conjunction with the North Delta regional Training Academy.
The workshop was designed for and attended by local and regional police and sheriff’s officers and deputies and consisted of 40 hours of classroom and hands-on training over the course of one week.
Mock crime scenes were set up throughout the facility and participants spent several hours wading through the collection of dummy corpses, bullet casings, clothing items, and numbered placards that littered each scene. They took measurements and photographs and worked each scenario as though it were an active crime scene, even going so far as to have to deal with onlookers and bystanders who were “played by” members of the department.
The mock crime scenes were investigated with an emphasis on teamwork and were done so from start to finish as though the officers were conducting a live investigation in the field. The first part of the week consisted of classroom instruction and training which was then implemented by the officers during the second half of the workshop, which consisted of fieldwork. Officers took detailed notes of each crime scene and studied photographs, police sketches, and other physical evidence, then processed all of it as though it were part of a real case.
Attendees of the workshop included officers and CSI professionals from jurisdictions in Louisiana and Mississippi. It was intended to help them “advance their skills in basic crime scene investigation” and become more efficient and proficient in that part of their duties as law enforcement officers.
Most of those who attended were exposed to methodologies and techniques that they had never used before and even some that they were not even aware existed.