Students learn real pace of detective work

Leanne Grant's eighth-grade students at Scott City Middle School won't mistake Missouri State Highway Patrol investigators for the quick-talking cast of characters in the "CSI" television show.

The patrol's crime-scene investigators don't rush through the evidence like prime-time Gil Grissom and his "CSI" colleagues.

They don't solve crimes in an hour, students learned during a presentation by three patrol investigators in the school parking lot Friday.

Real crime-scene investigators have a variety of high-tech tools at their disposal, but that still doesn't assure they can uncover a usable fingerprint at a crime scene or find the right DNA match.

It can take investigators hours and hours to process a crime scene, sifting through dirt for the murder bullet and making extensive records of every bit of evidence and where it was found.

At outdoor crime scenes, the patrol investigators often have to fend off mosquitoes. "They don't show them on TV," investigator Bud Cooper told the students.

Processing a crime scene can take from a couple hours to more than week, he said.

And Cooper and fellow investigators Terry Mills and Don Windham don't do it with well-dressed women by their side. Unlike the television show where women play leading roles, men hold all eight criminal investigator positions in the patrol's 13-county Southeast Missouri district.

Cooper, Mills and Windham demonstrated basic evidence techniques to the students gathered around the patrol's mobile crime lab on Friday.

About 60 of Grant's students -- spread over three classes -- heard from the investigators.

In one demonstration, the officers tried to lift a shoe print off a tabletop with a device that uses static electricity. But the effort produced only a slight image on the special film.

"Everything doesn't work perfectly all the time," Windham said.

Patrol investigators solve about 85 percent of its cases.

The patrol's computer search to find a fingerprint match can take all day. On "CSI" it takes only minutes.

It also takes time to set up equipment and collect evidence. Investigators don't just rush into a room like their television counterparts.

"It doesn't work that way," Cooper said.

Students had varying reactions to the crime-scene presentation.

"It is all kind of over my head," said Rachel Reed, 13.

Hayley Compass, 13, said real investigators get called out in the middle of the night. "It takes long hours," she said after listening to the presentation.

Hayley said the job doesn't appeal to her. "I couldn't handle being around dead bodies," she said.

But the real-life tools of crime-scene investigators intrigue Zac Kurgas, 13.

"It would be kind of fun using all these gadgets," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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