Forensic Photography, Tuesday March 26, 2019

Hi Folks,

Last night we had two guest speakers from the forensic team based in Aylesbury giving us a talk on forensic photography.

Linda Cox has been working with Thames Valley police for nine years and has been trained and has qualifications and now has the ISO certification which means they carry out procedures to a required standard which is acceptable to the courts.

Her partner in crime this evening was Roz Middleton who specialises in body remains and recovery and has been with the force for ten years.

They are on call as part of a team 24 /7 and do all kinds of testing and photography at the scene of the crime.

which involves picking up evidence from DNA, fibres, blood and footprints on all kinds of materials at the scene which may be in a building or even a car.

Everyone has a different fingerprints even twins and and any fingerprints found are first photographed before raising them using tape and a gel on to a card.

Footprints are also photographed and will appear on lots of different fabric especially things like paper on the floor or wood but carpets that most people have don’t give off good prints. Plaster casts are then made in the hope of getting a special matching pattern or wear on the shoes. Other crime scenes can also be matched if the person is wearing the same shoes. Also if a person is apprehended they could be wearing them at the time of arrest.

 

Sometimes supermarkets or banks can release a special ultraviolet powder if the alarms are set off which make footprints, the assailant does not even know they are making them.

 

Other types of evidence like blood and DNA are collected from different sources in the crime scene

The crime scene is completely photographed in a 360 degrees movement and up and down the room. The photographs are then stitched together to produce the crime scene in court to show the jury without them having to visit the place.

Bite marks on a victim are photographed and will be taken all around the area of the wound and then stitched together to show all of the injury. Also photographs are taken at the mortuary as evidence.

 

So a large collect of hundreds of photographs are put together for a case.

All fingerprints are photographed, lifted, then labelled and bar coded

also with footwear prints

 

At post mortems everything is photographed for evidence and to identify the person.

 

The camera used for taking the 360 degree views which stops other people from needing to enter the crime scene and treading over potential evidence.

 

The bite injuries are measured accurately to help match a person’s teeth

 

Roz specialises in body recovery and in the image below only the skull was visible. Photographs of the teeth were taken to try and establish the identity of the person quickly via  local dentists in the area as it is a traumatic time for families involved and informing them that the victim found is their missing person or not.

So to sum it all up a large amount of data is collected from a crime scene to use in various ways.

 

Coffee time

 

After coffee various fingerprints on articles that could be found on a crime scene were set up for us all to photograph.

 

Linda and Roz with their 360 degree camera

The camera

measuring equipment

Fingerprints found on a mug

 

members taking pictures

 

I had an easy night as Des Fox took all the pictures

 

Thank you to Linda and Roz for giving the talk

It all seems to have got more sophisticated since the last episode of Columbo

Old time crime scene as I remembered it

Where Colombo  goes to the door, puts his hand on his head and says, ” I have this problem, the victim locked himself in the room and made an emergency call and the phone has been put down on the receiver by a left handed person and the victim is right handed” lol

Next Week is

Club Members Present…