Second to Last Day

Today was an especially long day because I didn't have a sports commitment until 5:30. I arrived at the office around 10:00 am and quickly started producing graphs to display the aircraft fatality data. I completed six or seven graphs, which you will be able to see if you come to the Senior Project presentation on Tuesday! Kim had to leave for a meeting, so I helped Rosie purge the stored specimens. "Purging" is getting rid of samples of tissue and blood to make room for the new cases. All evidence is kept in the fridge for one year. After that, all the evidence kept in the fridge is documented and thrown away, save for two vials of blood, preferably from the femoral artery. However, all evidence from homicide cases and some undetermined cases is kept. Further advances in medicine or a case can change the outcome of a case. If the samples have been thrown away, the evidence is not there to go back to. This could result in the case getting dropped. After going through about twenty bags of specimens, I took lunch. When I got back to the office, I went on a "little road trip" with Rosie to the Crime Lab and Toxicology Lab on Hazen Drive. I got to see the front desks of both! While there wasn't much to see at the labs, I witnessed the start of a strict chain of custody. I learned about this in Criminal Justice before the start of my Senior Project. Every piece of evidence needs to be accounted for. This means the date, time, signatures of who dropped the evidence off and who received it. Everything is marked and is documented. Again, if there is an inconsistency in the chain of custody, the evidence is no longer viable in court. Each stage of the chain of custody is taken very seriously! When we got back to the office, Kim had returned and we looked at numerous pictures from previous cases. Gruesome stuff! Around 4:00, Kim left for another meeting and I set to helping Rosie again. At a crime scene, investigators take anything and everything that they think might be pertinent to the case. So, the evidence room is chock full of evidence like prescription bottles and pills. She has five large boxes from autopsied cases and what are called sign-outs, or non-autopsied cases, where the cause of death is quite obvious and no foul play is suspected. I started sorting through the bags of prescriptions, organizing them by case number and bar code. It was 5:00 before I knew it and had to stop my sorting efforts. Tomorrow, my last day at the office, I will finish organizing them and will eventually take pictures to document the evidence. Check in tomorrow to hear about my last day. So sad! I'll miss everyone at the office terribly. I have learned so much in so little time. Hopefully, I will be able to come back soon. Until next time!