Forensics

This week my academy class was on forensics.  We heard how evidence is taken in, documented, given a bar code, stored and sealed in bags and kept.  We heard about drug testing and got to see the drug testing lab with overhead hoods and scientific equipment.  The newer way to use marijuana, we hear, is to put it in a tube, infuse it with butane, and dry the liquid until the butane has evaporated.  What is left is a honey like substance that you can smoke with an E-cig or "dab."  To dab is to heat up that honey like stuff and inhale it.  Dangerous stuff.  Butane is highly flammable which is why it is used in lighters.  I had never heard of this. We are shown a display of how the process works. The supplies for the display were obtained, ironically, on Amazon and Etsy!  We learn about fingerprints.  Years ago, when somebody broke into my house and rifled through my underwear drawer and sock drawer, my dresser drawers were dusted for fingerprints. That white powder was hard to get off.  Fingerprints are easier to obtain from solid surfaces.  Leather, for example, doesn't hold a fingerprint well where as plastic, wood and metal are easier.  Fingerprints are unique.  No two people have the same fingerprint. Now hand prints are taken so there are even more places to compare.  We learn about the state database and the national database for fingerprints.  We move on to hear from Officer Moriarity (which is a hilarious name for a law enforcement person if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes) about DNA.  This department has a clean lab (where people wear coats, hairnets, booties, and hairnets) with lots of very expensive equipment.  The information we get is technical and difficult but also very engaging.  What gets me most is the enthusiasm and pride each one of our speakers have for the jobs that they do.  If ever, someday, I write a book, it probably wouldn't be a mystery.  But if it was a crime mystery, and the criminal was an identical twin, it is good to know that the criminal could pin the crime on his or her sibling if DNA evidence was used.  However, if the evidence was a fingerprint, justice could be done.  Even identical twins have different finger prints.