Students examine a blood-spatter pattern on the wall of a vacant house in the Futenma housing area on Camp Foster during an advanced crime-scene training session sponsored by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on Wednesday. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
Students examine a blood-spatter pattern on the wall of a vacant house in the Futenma housing area on Camp Foster during an advanced crime-scene training session sponsored by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on Wednesday. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
Petty Officer 1st Class Tony Colosi directs the flow of the dental modeling plaster into a footprint as Petty Officer 1st Class Armando Covarrubias pours the plaster into the impression. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
Sgt. Alma Fennell tests the stains on the floor of a vacant house in the Futenma housing area on Camp Foster during then advanced crime-scene training exercise. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
Special agent Elizabeth Toomer, center, with Naval Criminal Invistigative Service on Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, and an instructor for advanced crime-scene investigation training, tells her students she wants them to examine the blood splatters in the empty house at Camp Foster, and then tell her what they think happened. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
Intern Elvis Rodriguez, with the Army Criminal Investigative Service on Torii Station, Okinawa, blows liqui-lift across fingerprints on the arm of Special Agent Elizabeth Toomer, who walked Rodriguez through the process for lifting fingerprints from skin. (Cindy Fisher / S&S)
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Crimes are solved in less than an hour on television shows like “CSI,” but it takes considerably more time and hard work in the real world, Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agents training here said Wednesday.
“A crime scene is a huge puzzle and we just have to compile the evidence piece by piece,” said Mari Nash, an NCIS supervisory special agent on Okinawa.
“It’s not all glitz and glamour,” she said. “There’s mud and muck, bugs and animals — and it can be painstaking. But it’s important to do it and do it right.”
Thirty Department of Defense law enforcement officials from 13 agencies throughout the Pacific were here for 2½ days of advanced crime-scene training and a refresher in basics of evidence gathering.
“The key,” said Special Agent Vasco Sutton, based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, “is to be able to collect and document the evidence.”
Agents practiced fingerprint- lifting techniques, tread-impression casting and other basic skills while sharing different experiences. Instructors also taught advanced skills such as blood-splatter analysis and the use of Luminol, a chemical used to detect trace remnants of blood at crime scenes.
“Nothing is as easy as it seems on TV,” said Okinawa NCIS Special Agent Kiyomi Griffey.
Everything must be preserved and documented at a crime scene, she said, and only through hard work can an investigator determine what is actually evidence that relates to the case at hand.
