Lake County Crime Lab provides crime scene and evidence collection training to area officers

Gathering crime scene evidence is a science.

About 80 law enforcement officials from Lake County, including officers, detectives and prosecutors, learned the art behind the science when they attended the Crime Scene: Response, Processing and Collection Course, instructed by the internationally accredited Lake County Crime Lab on April 19.

The course, held at Lakeland Community College Holden Center in Kirtland, provided sessions on the legal aspects of crime scenes; crime scene analysis, approach and processing; the use of 3-D scanners; DNA; trace evidence; fingerprints; firearms; drug chemistry; and toxicology.

Dave Green, course presenter and criminalist with the crime lab who handles trace evidence like hairs, fibers fingerprints, explosives, footprints, tire tracks and more, said the purpose of the course is to teach the officers on the road how to better collect evidence for the lab.

“We have a better chance of doing more if they are collecting good evidence,” Green said. “If they are not collecting evidence properly or they are not collecting good evidence, we can’t do something better with it. So, we teach this so that they are out collecting the best evidence that they can, so that we can do the best examinations.”

Joe Matteo, chief investigator for the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office, feels that the crime lab has great capabilities, and a lot of younger officers could benefit from the course.

“There has been turnover in the law enforcement field recently, and we have some younger officers who don’t have all the training and some older officers that could use a little bit of a refresher, and it’s good to stay current on what all they are able to do and are able to help us with,” Matteo said. “My group of detectives at the Prosecutor’s Office respond to crime scenes to assist agencies with their processing of scenes. It’s just for them to get to know us a little better and what we can do to help to make these scenes fruitful for evidence for cases to go to trial.”

Officer Louis Gibson, who graduated from the police academy in August and signed on with Lakeland Community College Police Department in October, found the session taught by Green on trace evidence, such as footprints and tools, to be the most interesting topic.

“To see what they can do at the crime lab, that was very interesting,” Gibson said. “That they can take the smallest thing ... and how they can make a case out of something that if we took a look at, we might not be able to. So it’s interesting what they can do with the small stuff.”

Gibson also said he was looking forward to working with crime lab staff in the future.

Willoughby Police Detective Lt. James Schultz, who has worked with the department’s detective bureau for the last five years , said crimes scenes are a big part of what they do in the bureau.

“The detectives go to the crime scenes to help patrol officers process them,” Schultz said. “As we follow up on these cases, you have to analyze them and look for the little details that can be hidden in the scene.”

He found the most interesting part of the course to be the way they addressed each aspect of a crime scene, whether its DNA, touch DNA, or fingerprints.

“Every little bit of it kind of reinforces what you already know or what you should be doing or looking at,” Schultz said. “It’s great. These guys at the Lake County Crime Lab, they are the experts, they have been doing this a long time, they are good people and they are doing exactly what we are trying to do: That is, solve the crime, make the case, and put the bad guys in jail.”

Schultz noted that when detectives investigate crimes, they examine every little aspect. They look at the police officer’s report, the photos, all the evidence involved and try to put it all together.

“Having instruction like this today with even more in-depth instruction, whether it’s just on DNA or just on photographs, it helps reinforce what we are trying to do and it helps us remember some of the little things we don’t always remember,” Schultz said, “It’s a big part of what we do. It’s evidence that puts the criminals in jail and the Lake County Crime Lab is the expert in analyzing that evidence and providing that analysis to the court, to the police officers, to the jury and to the judge.”

According to Matteo, the course was to help law enforcement know and understand the capabilities of what the crime lab scientists have to do with the evidence that has been collected.

“If it’s done properly when the time comes to bring it into court and all the protocols are followed, then they have a good understanding on how to present it to the jury,”Matteo said. “If they (prosecutors) have a good understanding, their job is to convey that to the jury so that they the jury can understand it.”

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