Crimewatch: Behind the Scenes of Forensic Science

I've just watched Crimewatch: Behind the Scenes of Forensic Science, it is some interviews with the experts about what they do in Forensic Science, so if you guys are interested, here are the links.

Peter Lamb talks through the Forensic analysis of Blood.

Peter Lamb talks through the Forensic analysis of Fibres.

Simon Monk talks through the Forensic analysis of Drugs.

DI Grant Johnson: Specialist Crime Directorate.

Dr Glenn Wilson on Serial Attackers.

Links from BBC, Crime Watch.

Wasting Prefect's Time

I just watched PC David Copperfield's program in BBC Panaroma because when the program shows up, I'm still in my home country cherishing every moment I could with someone special. As the video runs through, there are so many similarities with what I had when I was a Prefect in my school. Paperwork (as usual), chasing targets, catching criminals (which in this case is students that had offences), patrols etc, which made me a feeling of "Hey! We are not so different after all!!!" Yes, well, of course I cannot compare what I had with the real world police, which they had to deal with much more serious offences than I had faced back in school. 

Just for some sharing, like the usual bobbys, they report for duty, same with me, reporting for duty wherever I had been assigned to the area in the early morning, doing the normal patroling around the school, and if I found some students that look suspicious (which due to my intuition that he will be having some stuffs that is prohibited in school), I can stop and search him, it's just that I doesn't need to fill in a "Stop and Search form", but if I do found something prohibited item, I can remove the item from his possession, give him a slip which consist of my name, his name, date and the item description, less than 2 minutes and I'm on my way back to prefect room and look for the Group members that is responsible for prohibited items to file in the item I had, they will just put the item into a plastic bag, fill up the similar slip I just gave to the student, and I'm on my way back to my duty place.

Chasing targets, yes we do have targets to chase as well. You people must be having your jaws open, Prefects in school have targets to chase?? What world am I in?? We have a certain target to chase for in our personal notebook, which we had to hand in every friday, if we don't meet the targets, the group that is responsible for Demerit System will come looking for you, and which resulting something not really good happened, some Prefects actually fake up some names and offences to meet the targets, that happens when I'm no longer a Prefect so I don't know how the Board dealt with them. But er, what targets used for?? It only made Prefects or Bobbys a hard time.

Paperwork?? We do have, but not full with MG1-MGXX (I forgotten how many Manual of Guidance are there as now I only deal with MG11). Whenever something happened, which is something really bad happened including a fight, a fight with prefects etc, we will be spending some time in the prefect room, sitting at a corner and filling up Serious Offence Form, and will be handing the form to discipline teacher for further actions, and we still need to get the form back for photocopies and then hand the original form back to the discipline teacher, why don't photocopy it at the first place? Well, I can't because there is a column where the teacher need to fill in what he/she had done to the student and signature.

Now, enough of flashing back and had to get back to my work.

Links from PC David Copperfield that is enjoying his work in Canada and BBC.

Evidence Bag & Caffeine, do not mix.

Here are some pics of my lab session in examinations of samples collected and bagging them into evidence bags. I'll let the pics to do the talking this time. One of my sample is a piece of wood that had been suffered from various cuttings, strikings, grippings and pryings, and I have to place some Mikrosil on it, cast it and bag it. And it doesn't ends there like any other CSI you seen in telly, I still need to fill in the form in front of the bag, yes it's considered as paperwork, and I'm just another lad that got into the world of paperwork.

Extraction of Caffeine from tea bags!

Separation of caffeine from the tea sample using solvent extraction.
Then the photos skipped for a few steps, whoa la! Out came the Caffeine in 50ml of tea, quite a lot of amount of caffeine I drank each day huh?? Same as you actually. Fancy a cuppa??

Links from CSIequipment.com . You can get whatever stuffs you like to play as a CSI or SOCO at this website.

Home Office Scientific Development Branch

Recently I came across this news from the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, they are organising their yearly HOSDB Exhibition. But unfortunately it is only for visitors from the Police Service, Government Departments and Law Enforcement agencies, looking over and over again of the visitor registration form, dissapointingly I do not fall into neither one of it's categories. Just have to say it's a shame, I'm not a Police Special or PCSO, but just another wannabe.

Links from www.homeoffice.gov.uk .

Blues on two, I was walking today after lectures, and an rapid response ambulance with blue lights and siren was rushing through the traffic, when it came beside the road I was walking, the car in front of the ambulance was in the fast lane, suddenly stopped. If you can't drive a car and give way to the emergency response services, then don't drive and consider taking a bus or bicycle or walk, if the driver of the ambulance did not react fast enough and had made a mistake, I might be one of the consequences and lying on the bed in hospital or maybe mortuary right now waiting for post mortem.

Of ESDA and Ninhydrin on white paper

Just came back from an assessment of my newly learnt skills of Forensic test, I was given a piece of white paper as evidence, and asked me to recover the sample from it. Everybody like me had been in the lab for the past few weeks, will know what we can get from a piece of white paper, writing indentations and fingerprints is the most common.

So here it goes, i used White Crime-Lite and scanned through the surface, well I do saw some indentations but couldn't find any fingerprints. Then this comes to me, if I used Ninhydrin first to recover fingerprints (if there are any), I risked the writings destroyed by the solution, or maybe distorted the whole writing indentation, if I used ESDA to recover the indentations, I may risked the fingerprints destroyed due to "bulk" handling. Amino acids on paper, I really don't know the handling during ESDA will destroy the prints or not. Eventually, I used ESDA first as I totally had no idea where the prints are or they are present or not.

Anyway, had just finished "Perverting the Course of Justice", and a new book had just arrived and started to read it. About the book? Will talk about it in the next post.

Links from www.fosterfreeman.co.uk .