How many of you have dealt with or have seen law enforcement officials surveying crime scenes in your town? I'm often surprised when I see it going on in smaller towns (I'm not saying Kingsport is a small town, but I have seen law enforcement surveying in towns smaller than Kingsport).
I would guess that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is the one with the equipment and the knowledge and one of the local Officers was recruited to hold the rod:
"Just remember, the bubble goes where it wants to. Move the circle toward the bubble."
That's just a guess.
James
Quite often. I would think it would get dicey if testimony was required on the survey data.
Never dealt with or been involved with them, but have seen it quite often. The Virginia State Police "survey" the scene of every vehicle accident resulting in a fatality. They usually are measuring length of skid marks, sight distance from intersections, etc. I have no idea how well they are trained to use the equipment or the weight of this evidence in court. It is usually uniformed officers at both ends, total station and rod.
> Quite often. I would think it would get dicey if testimony was required on the survey data.
About 10 years ago an officer doing this type of work had the same concern. The equipment, data collection software, mapping software and training are purchased as a package deal. Think of the GPS hardware, software and training offered to surveyors. This officer had been trained by the company producing the package as well as the State of Ohio for accident and crime scene investigation. During testimony one attorney asked about the officer's training and was satisfied with the answers.
However, the officer was made more aware of the limits of background on testing (calibration) of the equipment. As a result that officer came to the college where I was teaching. After speaking with surveying professors the officer decided to take a basic surveying course. Over the next 4 years the officer completed the civil engineering associate degree. This was in addition to an existing 4 year degree in criminal justice and the training previously mentioned. That officer told me that every course overlapped into the accident reconstruction or crime scene mapping training and made the prior courses more understandable. I know that officer later was teaching related material at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy.
A quick search found the following "Accident and Collision Investigation" software. http://www.dtmsoftware.com/accident-collision-investigation/
or
http://www.carlsonsw.com/solutions/accident-investigation/csi-mobile/ a few of you might already be aware of one of these companies.
"...It is usually uniformed officers at both ends, total station and rod..."
I would be careful with statements like this. You may be a much better user of a total station than those you speak of; SO WHAT. I am reasonably sure the total station is simply a tool to help them in with their skill of accident reconstruction calculations and analysis.
Add to that, they used to use a wheel.
Just like Surveying, Accident Reconstruction is NOT about the tools. They are both about KNOWING WHAT TO MEASURE, and why those items are important and how they build the body of evidence through corroborating analysis.
Reconstruction tool most Surveyors don't use.
We had a law inforcement officer come to one of our chapter meetings a couple years ago and speak on accident scene mapping.
He said he usually talks about how amazing the equipment he uses is, but with us, we already knew that....:-)
He said his first concern, is how the scene will layout on paper and that's how he orients his survey. He said he will pick a fire hydrant or pole to orient to, because it will be there when he comes back.
He also told us about how they used a base line with station and offset, with a tape, before they went electronic.
he said that; due to budget restraints, they shared equipment between jurisdictions and used the least expensive, outdated gear, that they could find.
I've seen it 2-3 times in as many months.
Last one I saw was last month. GSP had 2 officers on a scene almost all day... I watched for a few moments and they were efficent in their data collection process. And they were in the middle of a 6 lane highway....
Ironically....
many of us here survey solo (inc me) or use 1-2 assistants....
Law Enforcement uses 2 people....
But, last month I passed a site being surveyed by GA DOT crews.... I counted 10 people..... yes, 10 survey field personnel.... on a little used off ramp at the end of a highway...... I also watched them for a few moments... it was comicial 😉
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you...
In general, the Law Enforcement investigators do a pretty good job. Consider the number of fatality investigations that occur in one year versus the fact that over the decades, I get one to two calls per year to do a photogrammetric analysis to determine something that they forgot to measure.
Last year I happened to walk past the active scene of an injury accident (medical issues had already been dealt with) and saw that the fire department had a ladder truck on site with the ladder extended 50 feet or so above the scene. There was no fire involved. Although no one was on the ladder when I walked past, I assume they were using it as a vantage point for near-vertical photos. First time I've seen that, but it seems like a good use of available resources.
A local surveyor actually did this when he was a state trooper. He had been in the military and surveyed, then the state troopers and surveyed, now a licensed surveyor.
There is also a retired state trooper a couple of counties over who gets called out to map some of the accident scenes. He actually will have requests and fly his own plane out to a location to map it.
Interesting how diverse of options there are in surveying.
> "...It is usually uniformed officers at both ends, total station and rod..."
>
> I would be careful with statements like this.
I'm guessing you read 'uni'formed as "un"informed.
That extra n is pretty important to the meaning. He was probably pretty sure they were uniformed.
I knew a CHP officer who worked as a Surveyor then got into the CHP Academy then worked as an officer for several years. He also was a helicopter officer. Then they made him retire for medical reasons so he took the LS and started working as a sole proprietor then worked for an engineering firm. I heard he retired recently.
The state police and local parish both have accident survey cops. I assume that they do double duty as crime scene survey crews for years now.
They use Sokkia TSs. I think a local dealer was aggressive in procuring them as customers. Good for them both. They may have upgraded to robots by now.
I know in New Orleans that I have seen the Feds on the news surveying crime scenes. One was the Danzinger Bridge case where the Feds took over an investigation of New Orleans police officers. They closed down the bridge to survey the crime scene.
I saw on of these reality cable crime shows (maybe first 48) where the police used a scanner to survey a drive-by shooting somewhere.
CA law provides an exemption to the license requirement for public safety employees "for the purpose of determining or prosecuting a crime or infraction."
I have friends who are CHP and have measured and mapped accident scenes. For the purposes required, and under the conditions described to me, the tools and their use of them seem adequate.
I have also heard of at least on case in which the careful location of various objects at an incident scene were of importance. One of the parties involved did not have confidence that the CHP "survey" would have been performed carefully enough, so hired a PLS to survey the scene. I don't see how a PLS would have been hired in time to locate all the debris, so the locations at issue must have been things like lane locations, visual obstructions, skid marks, etc.
The court accepted the CHP survey for what it was, a map showing generally where things were at the scene, but the lack of a LS for CHP vs a map prepared by an LS was all that was needed to give the surveyor's map greater credibility where the precise location of various features was at question.
If I can remember who the surveyor involved was, I'll get more/better details.
Someone told me one time that officers had to complete the survey for "chain of custody" reasons, which made sense to me.
Can you imagine being on the witness stand:
Attorney: "Mr. Surveyor, what training do you have in crime/accident scene investigation?"
Mr. Surveyor: "Well, I watch CSI reruns on a regular basis".
They do ok scanning from one setup but they don't really understand the concept of control. We did some work with three CHP officers, smart guys, I will say that. They have a huge truck with a stand up box and an RTK system they didn't know how to use.
Even the Coroner has a scanner.
We did some work which involved transferring the evidence to me, do the necessary scanning, the transfer the evidence back to the lead investigator.
That was one dedicated and intelligent officer.
He saw the possible ramifications on being challenged on his procedures and precision on a nasty case and decided to preclude such a challenge possibly being successful.
B-)