Scenes of crime officer

Scenes of crime officer...

The role of a SOCO is to preserve, collect and examine any evidence within a crime scene. SOCO's work alongside the police and detective within an investigation in order to appropriately gather evidence. There are many responsibilities and protocol that a scenes of crime officer should follow in order for an accurate outcome of examined evidence. The main priority for a SOCO is to make sure no contamination or destruction occurs to evidence within a crime scene, to minimise this the officers have to wear clothing which protects not only the officers from any harm and also the evidence that they are in contact with from being contaminated by the officers bodily fluids and fingerprints. This clothing includes a face mask (which covers mouth), gloves, goggles, a white full body suit and shoe protectors. The next role of the SOCO's is to set out a pathway within the crime scene if the FAO hasn’t done so already, this is to prevent any contamination or destruction to evidence. Once the evidence has been located and the SOCO feels necessary to take into the laboratories for further analysis the evidence needs to be bagged and labelled in the appropriate correct manner. If not labelled or bagged correctly the evidence can be destroyed or not viable within a court room. Any evidence collected will then all be placed together after analysed in order to gain a viable suspect.

SOCO’s within the OJ Simpson case…

The officers within the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman did not preserve most evidence correctly.  The first mistake of the SOCO’s was arriving at the crime scene and not placing a common approach pathway out as Riske did not do so himself, by not doing this they risked contaminating or destroying evidence. However the biggest mistake the Scenes of crime officers made was placing a used blanket from inside Nicole’s condo over both bodies. By doing this any evidence upon both bodies could not be collected and the blanket would have contaminated the bodies with fibres and hairs from previous use. When evidence was collected the evidence was not placed into the appropriate bags, and several pieces of evidence were placed together within one bag. This meant that contamination occurred to the evidence and they could not be sufficiently analysed.

SOCO’s within other cases…

Upon the request of senior officers only will SOCO’s will attend a crime scene, not every crime will it be necessary for SOCO’s to attend. SOCO’s will mainly attend major cases for example a fraud investigation will not need scenes of crime officers where as a murder will. SOCO’s role does not change their priority is to gather evidence correctly whilst minimising potential contamination. However depending upon the investigation SOCO’s will collect different evidence, for example during a sexual assault SOCO’s will mainly examine the body of the victim for bodily fluids of the offender whereas during a murder they are looking for not only bodily fluids but any physical evidence such as the murder weapon.