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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Anatomy of a Sexual Assault Investigation XI


Working the scene: Part Five

When it comes to processing the crime scene it is very important to get the big picture. I spoke earlier about doing an initial walk through: this is where the assignments will be made of who is to do what.

Now that we’ve talked about collecting wet samples let’s look at lifting latent prints, or what we often call fingerprints.  We refer to these as latent prints for two reasons 1.) Because this is the nature of the prints we are collecting. Often they are not easily seen or hidden from obvious observation, and 2.) Because we are often looking for a great deal more than finger prints: [Latent- Present or potential but not evident or active.]

Evidence collection is identifying and then gathering any and all evidence in the crime scene. Palm prints, the blade of the hand, and foot prints are just a few of the types of prints which are collected under the banner of latent prints.

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