16 May 2012 Leave a comment
A simple reference application for android phone to provide assistance with forensic photography.
ideal for new users of Digital Cameras in crime scene investigation.
Download it here or use the QR Code below.
Also below that are a few screen shots, as always if you have any ideas or want to send us any comments please do so.
1 April 2012
Point your Android Phone at this page and download the new free Android App, CSI – Fingerprint Identification.
Developed by our own specialists this is the first version.
Updates will be posted here and also pushed out to your device.
Or click the link here
If you have problems with the files please email us on our usual email address
Below are some screen shots.
28 March 2012
Reports today are full of the news that Her Majesty HRH Queen Elisabeth will announce (officially) that television cameras are to be allowed in the courts of England and Wales.
This overturns two existing laws of the country requiring an Act of Parliament before it can go ahead.
The rules I have seen indicate that the cameras will only be allowed to film a judge’s summing up – his outline of the prosecution and defence cases, and the legal points the jury must consider. They would also hear the sentence passed and the judge’s explanation for why that punishment had been chosen.
What’s your thoughts? Do these measures go far enough?
Do they go too far? Will people be vilified live on television or will these steps start leading to sponsorship in the courts?
Specsavers and Wig manufacturers are already lining up to sponsor the Judges (not really…)
Have your say in the comments below and read the article here.
27 March 2012 2 Comments
We have all seen the news on a regular basis regarding the overturning of convictions, miss-carriages of justice and the review of a seemingly impossible case to crack.
These news stories remind us that the evidence we hunt for, recover and process must stand up to scrutiny which sometimes only comes to light many years into the future.
Many people write about Cold Case Reviews and its fair to say everyone has an opinion but few actually do anything about it, until now…
Defrosting Cold Cases is a blog dedicated to Cold Case reviews in the hope that experts using social media including Twitter can comment and point investigators in new directions.
Obviously not every aspect of a cold case can be disclosed to the public so the details talked about are ones that are in the public domain. That said, the experts who are regulars on this blog have and continue to help investigations move forward.
Enough about me talking, hit the image above or the link here to get taken to the blog, and see you on Friday with the hashtag #cclivechat
26 March 2012
The image above is a dummy. It is NOT real.
It is used to ensure the training given to our law enforcement and forensic experts is of a quality that will enable them to deal with real scenes of crime to the best of their ability.
Ensuring all evidence is captured and packaged correctly, Reducing cross contamination and ensuring the court learns the true scientific findings to show what happened at the scene.
Placing people in the scene (or not as the case may be) ensuing items that are missing or have been introduced are identified and the actions of parties present at the time of the incident are identified.
Is this going too far? Are the officers who have to deal with such traumatic events such as murder and death seeing too much because their training has introduced them to realistic scenes too soon? When they eventually attend scenes it has become so like the training the officers are unable to differentiate between them? Does it matter?
I for one really do see the need of realistic training but also there has to be a way of ensuring our officers are kept at their best especially with their mental health.
My question to you is this…. Does training have to be this realistic?
26 March 2012
We here a little bit every now and then about BlackBerry Smartphones being used in Law Enforcement but what about the photography of Fingerprint images which have been developed and could be sent back for comparison.
Are you using a system like this? Have you used this type of wireless transmission of data to speed up comparisons of captured images? Does it speed up your identification of suspects?
Let us know in the comments.
This image was taken using the Camera360 application on an Android Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone.
25 March 2012 2 Comments
It has been a very long time since I posted on here and for that I apologise if you actually like my musings (there must be one of you at least?).
Things have been moving quite quickly over the last few months with this and that most of which I am not at liberty to discuss due to its commercial sensitivity.
But lets look at the news that has happened… Forensic evidence has been getting a right old bashing with news from LGC Forensics in the UK stating there was a cross contamination issue with an alleged rapists samples, thus the actual offender has not been caught. The alleged suspect states he had never been to Manchester (and some won’t blame him 
) and he stuck to his guns. But how could this error have been made? As a community I believe we should have an independent authority, separate from the Police and Home Office, looking after our forensic evidence rights. They should have audit responsibilities and the powers of regulation as an independent authority.
This body would then be authorised to conduct audits and regulate the industry ensuring evidence is treated in a manner befitting the fact that it can be used, with the scientists opinion in a lot of cases, to send a person to jail for life!
In the case of the Manchester Rapist, the body should have the authority to conduct an inquiry and release its finding to ensure ALL Forensic Providers learn from this mistake. Then we will have the ability to rely on evidence more than we do today.
The current regulation is conducted by the Government with rules and guidelines set up under the Forensic21 body but this is run by NPIA. Who regulates the Forensic Providers for the Defence Counsel? Who supports them when things do go wrong?
Have your say in the comments.
5 January 2012 1 Comment
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
16 December 2011
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Image via CrunchBase
16 December 2011
Knox, 24, saw her conviction for the murder of UK student Meredith Kercher overturned on appeal in October.
The court said in a 144-page document that forensic evidence used to support the original verdicts was unreliable.
Miss Kercher, 21, from south London, was murdered in 2007 in the house she shared with American student Miss Knox in the Italian city of Perugia.
Also acquitted of the murder on appeal was Miss Knox’s former boyfriend, the Italian Raffaele Sollecito.
Case ‘gave way’
The court said the forensic evidence could not ultimately prove the couple were at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder.
It pointed to what it said were flaws in collecting forensic evidence and testing DNA traces originally linked to the defendants.
The prosecutors’ case could not stand, the court added.
The document said: “The bricks of that building just gave way. It’s not just a case of reassembling the bricks… but rather a lack of the necessary material for the construction.”
Referring to a motive, it said: “The sudden choice of two young people, good and helpful to others, to commit evil for evil’s sake, without any further reason, seems even more incomprehensible (if it is) to support the criminal act of a young man they had no relation to.”
In Italy, courts have to publish a document to explain the reasoning for reaching a verdict.
Book deal
Miss Knox was originally sentenced to 26 years in prison and Mr Sollecito to 25 years. The pair have always denied being at the Italian home of Leeds University student Miss Kercher at the time of the murder.
The judge upheld Miss Knox’s conviction for slander after she accused bar owner Patrick Diya Lumumba of carrying out the killing.
The sentence for that was set at three years, time that Miss Knox had already served.
Miss Knox has returned to her hometown of Seattle in the US, and is looking to sign a deal to write a book about her experiences.
Rudy Guede, an Ivorian, was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years’ jail in a separate trial.
He is now the only person serving time for the murder although prosecutors said he could not have killed Miss Kercher by himself.
OPINION:
So from that report we can say that she MAY have still committed the Murder but due to the Forensic Evidence being recovered in an inappropriate way we will never know. You will recall there were reports of a bra clasp not being sealed for 45 days and the officers laughing and joking on the video of them working within the scene.
Totally inappropriate behaviour. We all like to bring humour into our work, especially when the work is traumatic in nature (such as a murder), it’s a human way of coping… but there are times and places for that behaviour, and on video, in the scene is totally wrong.
Also the motive… needs to be clear when convicting in the first place.
Don’t forget to catch us on Twitter later today for #cclivechat, discussing cold cases, fingerprint recovery and many more themes… Noon EST (4pm GMT), look for the tag #cclivechat or follow me @TriniCSI
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