Behind the Yellow Tape

by Jarrett Hallcox

  “What’s going on?” we asked, nervous about the events outside.

  “It’s over the shooting of Sean Bell,” said Larry, obviously frustrated by the events unfolding. We were less than a month from the shooting when the protest occurred. On November 25, 2006, Sean Bell and two of his friends were stormed with a hail of police gunfire after exiting a strip club in Queens. The trio had been celebrating Sean’s last day as a bachelor; he was due to be married the following day. In all, fifty bullets were fired into the group, killing Sean and wounding his two friends.

  “Why were so many bullets fired?” we asked of the CSIs who had gathered around to hear the protest.

  “One of the cops thought he saw a gun,” one of the group offered up.

  “When I first got into police work, all I used to do was chase down people with guns,” Larry commented, his thick accent deepening as the day went on. “I would be undercover and drive a car that looked like it belonged in a bad neighborhood, windows tinted dark black, and when we’d see a gun, we’d bounce and run after them, trying to get the illegal guns off the street.

  “It was all a game—a dangerous game. Many times, the gun would be tossed and it would do the ‘Brooklyn Bounce’ before we could even get to it.” The Brooklyn Bounce simply meant that the gun was picked up and gone somewhere else fast.

  Most law enforcement officers go twenty or thirty years without ever having to fire their weapon or even removing their gun from the holster, except to qualify at the range once or twice per year. Larry’s an exception. He has used his gun, and often. So have many other NYPD officers. But fifty bullets seemed very excessive in this case. “But why fifty, Larry?” we asked candidly.

  “Well, the old saying goes, better to be tried by twelve than carried by six,” he replied, with a shoulder shrug.

  As the sun set on our day in New York City and the angry mob dispersed into the cold night, we went to dinner with Detective Larry Walsh at his favorite eatery in Queens, the Rincon Montane Restaurant. It was like going to dinner with Norm from Cheers. He was a regular.

  We were ushered to a small table near the back of the restaurant along the far wall, where Ramon, manager of the restaurant, presided over us as if we were royalty. The only thing Larry loves more than Spanish food is Spanish women; he greeted every waitress who came by with “How you doin’?” Though we were handed menus, Larry took control of the night, ordering in Spanish for both of us.

  “You know, we had this endless wipe not long ago in Brooklyn,” Larry said.

  “Endless wipe?” we asked, no idea what he was referring to.

  “Yeah, an endless wipe; working a crime scene that never ends,” Larry said, motioning with his hands. New Yorkers have terminology for everything. But the most original was space case, which refers to a poor guy who gets sandwiched between the subway train and the platform. Larry’s endless wipe had been another one of those “I smell something funny” cases. When emergency services arrived on the scene at the apartment, the bedroom door had been sealed off with towels stuffed under the door and decomp fluids leaking under the doorjamb. They had to knock the door down, and when they did, they witnessed a woman jumping out the window and fleeing down the fire escape. Inside, they discovered a male in the bloat stage of decomposition, purging out the anus, leeching fluids throughout the apartment. “Dude had overdosed,” Larry said. The medical examiner determined that no foul play was involved. They eventually discovered that the woman had been the dead guy’s girlfriend, and she’d been mopping up the body fluids, pouring pine-scented cleaner everywhere, and hanging up air fresheners by the dozens, hoping to cover the smell. “She kept climbing back into the apartment through the windows to sell the dude’s shit for dope,” Larry said, gulping his beer.

  “Did you catch her?” we asked Larry as the food arrived.

  “No,” he responded, while making sure everyone’s order was correct, speaking fluent Spanish to the waiters. “Her only crime would be grand larceny if the amount she stole was enough. We got bigger shit to work on than that; we can’t work every petty crime.”

  Just as Larry finished speaking, a guy came in off the street with a messenger bag hanging from his shoulder. He moved from table to table, until he reached ours. “DVDs?” he said, offering up his selection. This guy had every new movie imaginable, even movies just released over the weekend, all for sale at five bucks a pop. He also had hard-core porno for sale, “if you’re interested.” Larry motioned for him to move on and the guy did, never having a clue that he had just offered an NYPD officer illegal movies. “That shit just ain’t worth our time,” Larry said, digging into his heaping plate of sautéed garlic and plantains.

  “Did that case smell worse than the Body Farm?” we asked Larry.

  “I didn’t think the Body Farm was bad,” Larry said, shrugging his shoulders. “The worst smell I ever smelled was at Ground Zero.”

  “Well.” We gulped. “You’ve avoided that conversation all day; anything you wanna say about your experience there?”

  Larry ate a bite of chicken, then garlic and plantain, then he bent his head down again and spoke reverently. “I never want to relive the smell,” Larry began quietly. “Pulverized concrete, fiberglass, water, and bodies—never been anything on Earth like it.” Larry had been part of the first groups to arrive, going into the first tower that was hit.

  “I had just dropped my kid off,” Larry said, taking a big swig of beer. “When the second plane hit, I knew—we all knew—that it was a terrorist attack.” Larry had been standing at Ground Zero when the second tower collapsed.

  The first couple of days after September 11 were complete chaos. Nobody had taken charge, and everybody was sort of doing their own thing, trying to rescue somebody, anybody. Then, after a couple of days, most realized that the work had changed from rescue to recovery. That’s when the CSI units really got involved. “Each body part that we found got tagged and entered into a Global Positioning System,” he continued slowly. He then segued to the Pennsylvania plane crash site, led by emotion and a few Spanish beers. He’s not completely convinced by the official story of what happened there. “That engine was something like five hundred yards behind where the plane was found. Something else did that.”

  As quickly as he had begun talking about 9/11, he stopped. For several minutes he just stared at the jumbo TV, drinking his bottomless glass of beer. We each picked at the remnants of our spicy food, holding back garlic and rice burps. After talking for hours about crime, New York, 9/11, and nothing in particular, the time had come for us to leave our Larry Love. He drove us back to our car, his radio blaring the sounds of a new Sebastian Bach song. He was en route soon to China, at the request of Mr. Bach, to do what he does best: guard bodies. With a final hug, a gentle pickup off the ground, and a few tears, we said our good-bye to Larry Love so we could catch a few winks back at our hotel before our long drive home the next morning.

  The next morning, we watched the Today show down in the common area of the hotel with the other vacationers, businessmen, and the like. The scrolling marquee whizzed by the bottom of the television screen with weather reports, box scores, and an up-to-the-minute look at the Dow Jones. Sandwiched somewhere between sports and weather was the mention of a three-month-old baby who had been murdered by her father in the Bronx the day before. He had confessed to the killing and had been arrested. “Who the fuck would do that to a kid?” someone in the room said. Other than the NYPD and the medical examiner’s office, we were among the few people on the planet who knew the intimate details of what had transpired.

  The previous night, Larry’s partner had been sent to work the scene at the parents’ house, looking for any evidence that might show foul play. There was nothing tremendously out of place or suspicious—except for a perfectly rounded indentation in the wallboard, where the father had crushed his daughter’s head. “She wouldn’t stop crying,” he later told the police.

  We had had the privilege of seeing what the ME
saw, hearing what the detectives knew, and knowing what the CSIs had found. But in a city like New York, a city ranging anywhere from eight million to eighteen million residents, it’s virtually impossible for any one person on the criminal justice continuum to get that viewpoint. The father had confessed to the murder, which more than likely meant there would be no jury trial, so it’s possible that none of the players would ever know the whole story. With so much crime every day, they’d all be back to their respective autopsy tables, trench coats, and fingerprint brushes. In a sense, crime scene investigation in New York is like working in a huge Corvette factory, where the guy who makes the starters never sees the completed car—he just keeps churning out starter after starter after starter. Having that myopic view is sometimes problematic because it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. The never-ending job of working death takes its toll, and the reality of the job can sometimes get lost—and it’s all in the perspective that each keeps. The guy on the assembly line, when asked what he does, can either answer blandly that he makes starters or proudly, and accurately, say that he builds Corvettes. Larry, the ME, and the Keitels could answer that question, focusing on what their individual jobs are. But a better answer, and a better answer for every entity of the criminal justice system throughout the country, is to answer the question proudly—“I am a builder of Corvettes; I am a solver of crime.” And being a solver of crime is about as worthwhile a job as there is. So let it be done.

  9

  Back to the Future!

  ANYTOWN, USA

  Shots fired, shots fired!” the caller screams to the 911 operator. The operator takes the information and immediately calls the Anytown Police Department, sending the first responding officers to the address of the house where the call came from. The officers rush to the scene with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. As soon as they arrive, they draw their weapons from their holsters and approach the house carefully, methodically checking every door, every window, and every corner—making sure the perp is gone and the scene is safe. Within minutes, the officers see what appear to be bloody shoe prints on the sidewalk leading away from the house and blood pooling out from under the front door. The responding officers, believing that they probably have a murder scene on their hands, call their regional laboratory, requesting the assistance of the Crime Scene Response Team (CSRT).

  Shortly thereafter, the CSRT arrives in its fully equipped crime scene truck, decked out with all of the latest and greatest forensic equipment. This truck also comes complete with satellite communications and UHF wireless transmission capabilities for constant and real-time communication with the laboratory. These communications are broadcast on the newly acquired 700 MHz frequency named the Wireless Forensic Telecommunications Network (WFTN), once used by the television broadcast industry. UHF information sent wirelessly at this frequency can easily penetrate walls and buildings and can be sent long distances—all things that traditional Wi-Fi cannot do. By the time the team arrives on the scene, the crime scene response commander has been alerted and has assigned a crime scene case manager to oversee the entire case from processing the crime scene to getting the case to the courtroom. The case manager, who stays back at the laboratory, is a seasoned veteran with years of practical casework experience. He takes his post behind a fifty-inch high-definition plasma screen television where he can see and hear what is happening at the crime scene in real time.

  On arrival, the team members gather all of the information they can from the responding officers. Before they begin to process the scene, they all confer in the truck, with the case manager assigning duties via the WFTN. As they dress themselves in the newest anticontaminating PPE (personal protective equipment), a team member prepares headsets with microphones for everyone to wear while the scene is being processed. Thus, team members are always in constant communication among themselves and with the case manager at the lab.

  At the house, the seven-person response team begins its assault on the crime scene. Five people process the scene, searching for, photographing, and collecting evidence. Another person is in charge of being the videographer, recording everything at the scene and transmitting the live video feed back to the plasma screen at the lab. The seventh member of the team remains in the command center within the crime scene truck, managing the multimedia communication system.

  The photographer of the team begins taking digital pictures immediately. Through the use of a wireless SD memory card within the camera, the photographs are uploaded from the camera to a computer back at the laboratory. Of particular photographic interest at this scene are two pieces of evidence: a fingerprint that was just developed on the frame of the doorjamb and the bloody shoe prints on the sidewalk that seem to lead away from the scene. As the pictures of the fingerprint and shoe prints are taken, they are instantaneously transmitted to the lab, where the case manager receives them. The case manager downloads the photographs and adjusts them in Adobe Photo-shop, a digital imaging program, to bring out the best details in the photographs of the evidence. The manager then e-mails the photo of the fingerprint down to the latent prints section of the lab, where it is immediately uploaded into AFIS, the nationwide fingerprint database. The photo of the shoe print is submitted into the known shoe pattern database that contains tens of thousands of different patterns of footwear.

  As the CSRT continues to process the crime scene, the DNA specialist of the group begins to swab the blood found outside the scene, collecting samples and placing some of what is collected into a newly created device called “DNA on a chip.” This device, not much bigger than a dime, can sort the DNA strands by size and determine a profile for the sample. Within ten minutes, the chip confirms that two different people shed blood at the scene—a Hispanic female, who is the victim, and an unknown male Caucasian “person of interest.” The findings are submitted back to the lab, where the case manager will take the information and begin his collaboration with investigators at the Anytown Police Department.

  The other members of the team continue processing the inside of the house, combing the dwelling for anything that may be evidence. “What’s that?” comes through on everyone’s earpieces. The case manager, who’s been watching the team work the scene from his lab, has seen something on the screen and directs the videographer over to the broken window where a piece of fiber, possibly from the suspect, hangs in the shards of broken glass. The fiber is collected by the team.

  The team continues to work the scene, communicating throughout with the case manager at the lab. They use laptop computers called tablet PCs that allow them to write their scene notes, draw their scene sketches, and enter evidence into a log, all by writing on the computer screen. This technology eliminates writing notes on paper and having to transcribe them back at the office. All of the evidence that is collected and packaged is labeled with a bar code and scanned into the system for laboratory submission. The case manager consults with the team on what pieces of evidence have the most probative case merit and ultimately decides to submit only those that are determined to be the most relevant to the lab. Because investigators can determine at the scene which pieces of evidence are most important to the case, the lab will not have to spend time processing items with less evidentiary value, thus eliminating the “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality that has traditionally overwhelmed laboratories.

  Within eight hours the entire crime scene has been processed. While the team worked the scene, the lab scientists were already running tests on the evidence that was collected to help investigators with their search for the suspect in question. A positive match comes back in AFIS with the name of a male Caucasian, thus confirming the DNA-on-a-chip field sequencing. The shoe-pattern database also identifies the shoe print as coming from a New Balance tennis shoe. All of that information—name, race, even type of shoe—are critical in finding a suspect, and within hours that information has been given to the police department investigators. Before one full day has passed, the suspect is arres
ted, still wearing those same bloody New Balance shoes.

  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Too much like a Hollywood sci-fi flick, involving the creation of a flux capacitor and a wild trip in a used, plutonium-powered DeLorean. But it could be the crime scene of the future. In this day and age, crime scene investigation is usually a very low-tech affair, lacking continuity between the crime scene and the crime lab. And worst of all, forensic science usually plays a very small role in the actual investigation. By the time the laboratory analyst receives the evidence, analyzes the pieces, and sends them back to the investigating department (which is a time frame of roughly six months), the investigators already have a suspect in mind and quite probably have already made an arrest. The prosecutor then uses the evidence that was analyzed to either corroborate or refute the testimony of the accused. For a long time, forensic science has been a prosecutorial tool, providing the evidentiary ammunition for the prosecutor to go to court. The crime scene we just described could be the future of forensic criminal investigations.

  “I’ve always thought that forensic science should be an investigative tool,” forensic scientist Jeff Gurvis explains to us, on a cold and blustery day in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jeff has come to town to teach bloodstain pattern analysis at the academy. But this is only one of the many forensic hats that Jeff wears. Jeff is the lab director of a newly envisioned forensic laboratory. Though still in its early planning stages, this one-of-a-kind private, full-service laboratory could revolutionize forensic science. “That’s what it should be all about,” Jeff continued, “helping and aiding the investigation. Just think, if everything was in real time, everything is still hot, everybody is still very interested; the first forty-eight hours is the most crucial, right, so forensic science should help in that time frame.”

  The first forty-eight hours are the most crucial part of criminal investigations; after forty-eight hours, the odds of solving a case are drastically reduced, nearly cut in half. With many lab tests taking months to complete, the investigative value of the forensic evidence collected at the scene is diminished and, in many cases, nonexistent. According to Jeff, “Forensic science provides little to no impact during the first forty-eight hours because of backlogs, how things are organized, et cetera.”