Citizen’s Police Academy – Week Three
Week three of Citizen’s Police Academy and we’re all starting to feel like seasoned pros… okay, not really, but we can dream, can’t we? I was particularly excited about this week because we did crime scene investigations (CSI) and I knew that this week would be more hands-on.
We were led this week by Major Carey of the Criminal Investigations Division and some of his detectives. Which by the way, with the exception of the female detectives, almost half of the detectives are bald. That makes me wonder, is that some kind of unwritten code? They swore it wasn’t, but I’m beginning to think that the code is that to be a male detective you have to be bald or have buzzed hair. Ha ha!
So here’s the deal, we were given a mock crime to solve. Here’s the story (based on a true incident):
“During the late afternoon on March 9, 2009, a white man walked into CVS and handed a blue piece of paper to a pharmacy employee. The note demanded drugs and warned that he had a gun. Drugs were placed into a white plastic CVS bag and handed to the man. He ran out of the store and into a four-door car. The employee called 9-1-1 and noted the car headed northbound.”
The first thing we had to do was question the witnesses, so one detective played the pharmacy tech, while the other played the store manager. We asked the typical questions, “what was he wearing? Did you notice any scars or tattoos? Do you still have the note? Have you seen this man before?”
I think the detectives were having just as much as we were. When the detective (playing the CVS store manager) was asked how he managed to get from the back of the store to the front in time to see the get-away car he replied, “I ran track and did hurdles in college.” He then bust out laughing.
We were then divided up into groups of four and went to a few different “areas” of the investigation. The first for our group was fingerprints.
It was pretty interesting to hear Becky talk to us about fingerprints. She talked about how they’re able to get fingerprints depending on the type of surface, the type of skin a person has (some people have dry skin, doesn’t transfer well), and the different type of powders that can be used to get a latent print. So we were given different objects that had prints on them and were told to find the prints and put them on a card… I left this up to my trusty friend, Doug.
The next part of our investigation took us to the sally port (garage) where we were to search the suspect’s vehicle that had been recovered. We turned that car upside-down looking for any possible clue, making note of anything we could find. I even wanted to throw some crap in there for the next group to find, just to throw them off. 
While we could’ve easily solved this case lifting prints off the car, the detectives told us that we were looking for physical evidence. We found two notes, a pill bottle, a gun, a pager, ski masks under the seat, and a bunch of other things. Amazingly, after looking at the car’s registration, we found out that the car was registered to the Carmel Police Department (someone’s got some explainin’ to do! Ha ha!).
When we asked if we missed anything, it turns out we hadn’t. I attribute this to Doug’s thoroughness, along with the other two guys (I mostly took pictures and observed).
Our next stop was interrogation… this was the fun part for me. I was quiet at first, let my partner ask all the questions. The person across the table from us was a detective, impersonating our suspect. Here’s how my interrogation went down:
ME: Well then explain to me the gun.
SUSPECT: What gun? I don’t know anything about a gun.
ME: We found a gun in your car man, what’s up with that?
SUSPECT: I dunno. You found a gun in there? The cops must’ve planted it there, last time I got pulled over they took my money.
ME: Don’t play dumb with me, the gun is registered to you! Your prints are all over it!
SUSPECT: Okay… well, yeah… that gun’s mine. But I still don’t understand why you pulled me over. I’m just minding my own business and you guys start chasing me! Where I’m from, Indianapolis, we run from the police.
ME: Well, you’re in Carmel now my friend, and you know very well that Carmel PD has nothing better to do!
(Cop starts laughing)
ME: Come on… I don’t even need a confession from you. I’ve got circumstantial evidence. Your car matches our witness’ description being in the area at the time of the crime, we find pill bottles from CVS in your car, along with a ski mask and a gun! It doesn’t help that the car is registered to Carmel PD and you’re wearing a Carmel Police badge!
At this point, we just all start laughing, I had him… I just started having fun with it.
Once we were done with the interrogation, we headed back into the training room and did one more exercise. Basically we were asked to remember the details of someone who had just walked into the room briefly and left… this was very difficult. So I just let Doug run with it… Doug used to work for a bank and was trained to remember such details.
After that we were finished with the mock scenario. I must say that it was a really fun time. We sat around and talked about how interrogations are handled, techniques used, and other things. Overall, it was a great night and gave me more appreciation for what the detectives do… they are a bunch of great men and women and we had a good time.