Special Crime Investigation Part 1

SPECIAL CRIME INVESTIGATION AND FORENSIC MEDICINE

THE EVOLUTION OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

1. The Impact of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions

During the 18^th century, two events—an agricultural revolution and an industrial revolution—began a process of change that profoundly affected how police services were delivered and investigations conducted.

Improved agricultural methods, gave England increased agricultural productivity in the first half of the eighteenth century. Improvements in agriculture were essential preconditions to the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the eighteenth century because they freed people from farm work for city jobs. As the population of England’s cities grew, slums also expanded, crime increased, and disorders became more frequent. Consequently, public demands for the government to control crime grew louder.

2. The Fielding Crime Information & the Bow Street Runners

In 1750, Henry Fielding established a small group of volunteer, non-uniformed homeowners to “take Thieves.” Known and the” Bow Street Runners,” these Londoners hurried to the scenes of reporting crimes and began investigations, thus becoming the first modern detective forces

3. The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829

In 1829 due in large measure to the efforts of Sir Robert Peel, Parliament created the Metropolitan Police in London. Police headquarters became known as “Scotland Yard,” because the building formerly had housed Scottish royalty.    (Below, the left is the first office of the Metropolitan Police of London, at right is the new HQs)

3. American Initiatives

The success of Peel’s reform in England did not go unnoticed in the United States.

1. Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

The major private detective agency of the nineteenth-century was formed by Allan Pinkerton in 1819-1884.

2. The Emergence of Municipal Detectives

As early as 1845, New York City had 800 plainclothes officers, although not until 1857 were the police authorized to designate 20 patrol officers as detectives. In November 1857, the New York City Police Department set up a rogues’ gallery—photographs of known offenders arranged by criminal specialty & height.

3. State and Federal Developments

From its earliest days, the federal government employed investigators to detect revenue violations, but their responsibilities were narrow and their numbers few. In 1865, Congress created the U.S. Secret Service to combat counterfeiting. In 1908, U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte created the embryo of what was later to become the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when he ordered that investigation were to be handled by a special group. During the Depression, the FBI went after many famous criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde. The Pennsylvania State Police was created in 1905 and is the prototype for modern state police agencies.

 

4. The Police and The United States Supreme Court

As the highest court in this country, the Supreme Court is both obligated and well-positioned to review cases and to make decisions that often have considerable impact. From 1961 to 1966, a period known as the “due process revolution,” the Supreme Court became unusually active in hearing cases involving the rights of criminal suspects and defendants.

Historical Milestones of Criminalistics

The origins of criminalistics are largely European. Criminalistics draws from diverse disciplines, such as geology, physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, to study physical evidence related to crime.

1. Personal Identification

There are three major scientific systems for the personal identification of criminals: anthropometry, dactylography, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) typing.

1. Anthropometry was developed by Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), who is regarded as the father of criminal identification.
2. Dactylography
   1. Early Discoveries. In 1900 England became the first country to use dactylography as a system of criminal identification, fingerprints have a long legal and scientific history.
   2. The Herschel-Faulds Controversy. In the late 1800s, a controversy broke out between William Herschel and Henry Faulds, who both claimed to have discovered fingerprint identification as a means of identifying criminals.
   3. Galton’s and Vuchetich’s Systems. In 1892, Galton published the first definitive book on dactylography, Finger Prints. It presented statistical proof of the uniqueness of fingerprints and outlined many principles of identification by fingerprints. In Argentina, in 1894, Juan Vucetich (1858-1925) published Dactiloscopia Comparada outlining his method of fingerprints by using Vuchetich’s system to convict a woman beating her two children to death.
   4. The Henry System. Henry developed an interest in fingerprints and instituted a Bertillon’s system with the addition of fingerprints to the cards.
   5. Faurot and “James Jones.” In 1904, New York City Detective Sergeant Joseph Faurot solved several hotel thefts by correctly identifying a suspect who claimed to be James Jones. Fingerprints correctly identified Jones as a thug with many prior convictions by the name of Daniel Nolan.
   6. The West Case. In 1903 a fingerprint comparison of two Leavenworth Penitentiary prisoners revealed that Will West and William West were two different individuals. This was despite the fact the two inmates had identical appearances and nearly identical Bertillon measurements. This showed the superiority of fingerprints to anthropometry as a system of identification.
   7. The rivalry of Vucetich’s and Henry’s Systems. Vucetich’s book on fingerprint classification was published in 1894, seven years before Henry’s, but Henry’s system has become much more widely used.

3. DNA Typing.
   1. DNA as “Blueprint.” DNA is a chemical “blueprint,” which determines everything from our hair color to our susceptibility to diseases. Initially, the process of isolating and reading this genetic material was referred to as “DNA fingerprinting,” but currently the term DNA typing is used to describe this practice.
   2. The Enderby Cases. The first use of DNA typing in a criminal case was in 1987 in England.
   3. The Orlando, Cases. In 1986, a series of rapes and assaults occurred in Orlando, Florida, which set the stage for the first use of DNA typing in the United States.
   4. DNA Analysis. In 1988, the FBI became the first public sector crime laboratory in the United States to accept cases for DNA analysis. Since that time, there has been a substantial increase in the number of crime laboratories providing this type of service.

2. Firearms Identification.

As a specialty within Criminalistics, firearms identification extends far beyond the comparison of two fired bullets. It includes identification of types of ammunition, knowledge of the design and functioning of firearms, the restoration of obliterated serial numbers on weapons, and estimation of the distance between a gun’s muzzle and a victim when the weapon was fired.

ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OF AN INVESTIGATOR

Some investigators have a reputation of being lucky, and good fortune sometimes does play a role in solving a case. Most often, however, the “lucky” investigator is someone with strong professional training and solid experience that, by carefully completing every appropriate step in an investigation, leaves nothing to chance.

I am encouraging you therefore to watch the video below to take a look at the essential qualities an investigator has.

Our next presentation will be posted here soon!