Sunday, September 30, 2007

Police deal with crime lab delays

Reality bites: Cops combat the 'CSI effect'

By GIL BRADY
Star-Tribune correspondent

Filed 9.30.07

JACKSON, Wyo. -- In the sun-drenched, aesthetically cool world of “CSI: Miami” and other popular cop shows, it all looks so easy.

Invariably, each episode begins with the mysterious disappearance of a solid citizen, or the accidental discovery of a nude body, violently murdered and unearthed by a county worker surveying a backwoods road in the leafy, forested swamp.

Clues such as hair, blood, gunshot wounds, a watch and a ring on the dead man’s stiff hand offer vague hints linking the victim to his murderer. After a search of the nearby woods, an eagle-eyed gumshoe plucks a strand of black electrical tape off a weed dangling over a muddy boot print.

By the next commercial break, a ready, waiting and well-coiffured lab technician lifts a latent print off the sticky tape to the riffs of techno-music. Upon running it through a database, he develops slam-dunk proof either identifying a suspect, or eliminating one already under suspicion, spinning the hot pursuit in a new direction.

Voila! The rest of the show follows the chase, inevitable arrest and successful prosecution of the bad guys.

Without failure in TV land, crime lab results are definitive and instantaneous. Villains are caught, and their prosecutions are unerring and swift, a mere formality.

By contrast, Wyoming’s top cops are still awaiting the results of clues submitted to the state’s crime lab six months ago.

Photo captions & credits: "Publicity still for CBS' 'CSI: Miami'" courtsey of www.freewebs.com/csi-caine/

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