Friday, January 31, 2020

Investigating a Crime Scene Essay Example for Free

Investigating a Crime Scene Essay On TV shows like CSI, viewers get to watch as investigators find and collect evidence at the scene of a crime, making blood appear as if by magic and swabbing every mouth in the vicinity. Many of us believe we have a pretty good grip on the process, and rumor has it criminals are getting a jump on the good guys by using the tips they pick up from these shows. But does Hollywood get it right? Do crime scene investigators interview suspects and catch the bad guys, or is their job all about collecting physical evidence? In this paper, I’ll examine how a crime scene investigation really takes place. When working a crime scene there are many steps that must take place in order for any investigation to hold up in court. A proper investigation can take hours, but the end result can lead to a conviction of the guilty and justice for victim’s families. The first officer at the crime scene should do everything they can to keep all evidence in its original state. The crime scene must be blocked off immediately to avoid any contamination or loss of evidence. Boundaries should be established for each area of the scene that needs to be secluded. This will include any paths of entry or exits and areas where evidence has been discarded or located. All areas of the crime scene should be blocked off using tape, ropes, or traffic cones. If the crime took place indoors, a single room can be blocked off depending on the place of the crime and where it occurred. Police barricades and guards can help with securing the scene as well. This is a good way to monitor the area to make sure no unwanted people get through and cause loss of evidence. This will include officers that are not involved in the case, neighbors and the family of the victim. Securing the crime scene must be done in a timely manner and all persons entering the scene should be recorded, and times of the entry should be taken as well. Before anyone can enter the scene, the responding officer must first establish a walk way. This is done to ensure that no evidence is being touched and is out of the way before walking into the scene. This will include investigators or medical examiners that need to get to any victims that may be injured. Once the crime scene has been blocked off and secured, the investigators will process the area. At this time a strategy is put into place. This will start the examination of the area and documentation of all evidence at the scene. A walk through of the scene will take place by the lead investigator to establish how the scene was entered and exited at the time that the crime took place. Once the points of entry are established, the investigator will find the center of the scene using the path that the first officer established. A crime scene is three dimensional so that when making their way to the center of the crime scene, evidence will be located. It is the investigators responsibility to photograph and document these items as they are seen. There are many questions that will need to be answered during the investigation such as but not limited to: did this crime involve violence, or are there any hazardous conditions that they should be aware of? The scene should be looked over as if trying to put a puzzle together. Looking around at objects in the crime scene can tell a whole lot as to the time the accident occurred or if objects seem like they are missing. There are two categories a crime scene can fall under; one is a primary crime scene where the crime occurred or a secondary crime scene where evidence was taken to and is now a part of the crime scene. A command center needs to be put into place outside the crime scene. This is where the investigators receive their assignments, store the equipment that will be needed or where they gather to discuss or go over the case. Tasks are assigned to all of the investigators which will ensure that all aspects of the area are covered. Tasks include locating, processing, accessing, photographing and sketching the evidence at the scene. Searching a crime scene and how a crime investigation is carried out depends on the size and area of the scene being investigated. The different kind of crime that was committed can have a great toll on how the investigation is carried out as well. When doing a search of the crime scene, different kinds of flash or illumination are used to show fingerprints, handprints or other things that may be gathered as evidence. There are different patterns in which a crime scene is investigated or searched. Each pattern depends on the scene and what kind of evidence is suspected to be found at the scene. This could include: a line or strip search where two investigators walk in straight lines across the crime scene and search for evidence, a grid search where investigators form a grid throughout the scene making overlapping lines, a spiral search where an investigator works in a spiral motion from the outer part of the scene or vice versa, a wheel ray search which is done by a group of investigators that move from the boundary of the crime scene and work their way to the middle of the scene, or a quadrant or zone search where the crime is divided into sections and is split up between investigators and divided again to search more thoroughly through that section. When searching a crime scene at night difficulties will come up due to lighting. Boundaries of the scene are hard to see when trying to locate evidence. The search of evidence is determined by each crime scene, because every crime is different in its own way. Locating evidence includes footprints, weapons, blood spatter, trace fibers or hairs. When an investigator locates evidence everything should be recorded. Exact location in notes, photos and sketches must be done, and all evidence must be marked with an evidence marker once it is recorded. A search will end when all evidence is located. Once a decision has been made that the investigation has come to a close, the team will conduct a final survey. This survey will include an overview of the scene and all evidence is collected and bagged. Taking notes at a crime scene begins the moment an investigator gets a call. All notes must be specific. Notes should begin with all the information of the person who has called in, the time the call was placed and all of the information that is given about the crime, as well as the assigned case number that is given. When an investigator arrives at the scene, date, time and all persons present must be recorded. All notes should be in detail, and all movements that are taken should be documented. The lead investigator will do a walkthrough of the scene and at this time notes are taken with details of the condition of the scene. All notes taken should be in blue or black ink. Notes are very important to the investigation, and all notes should be taken at the scene and not left up to memory. This ensures that all information is recorded and nothing is left out. Notes should include all documentation of the victims, witnesses, evidence collected, tasks being performed, and when and how an object is packaged. There should be no task, detail or movement left out when taking notes at a crime scene. Photographing a crime scene is extremely important in a crime scene investigation, and should be of high quality and very clear. These photos will be used in court, so when taking the photos you need to keep in mind that the person or persons viewing the photos should be able to understand where the photos were taken and should be able to tell the story through them. The overall area of the scene should first be photographed such as street signs, street lights, addresses, and identifying objects. Photos should be taken in a clockwise direction to prevent any information from being left out. Different lenses should be used when photographing different parts of the scene as well as different illuminations, flashes and filters. The first photo should consist of a photography log that includes that case number, type of scene, date, location of scene, type of camera used, photographers name and title. Photos should be of the scene before it has been altered in any way. The photos should include the area that the crime took place, and areas where other acts occurred. Pictures should be taken from the outside of the scene working towards the middle of the scene. The photographer must be consistent when working through the scene as this will ensure that all evidence is photographed from all angles and nothing is left out. Photos should include: overview photographs which consist of the entire scene and surrounding area. These photos include all exits and entries, and should start from the outside of the scene and in all angles. And medium range photographs which show smaller areas of the crime scene. These photos should be taken with evidence markers. Sketching the crime scene is done after all notes and photographs are taken of the scene. A sketch will show the layout of the area or house where the crime was committed, as well as where the evidence was located. It is used to back up all notes and photographs already taken. All aspects of a crime scene will be shown in court and used to convict the guilty; therefore, it is extremely important that all steps of the investigation are followed exactly and with as much detail as possible to ensure that justice can be served.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

The Flag of India Essay -- Papers

The Flag of India The Indian flag consists of orange, white and green bands. The color orange stands for courage in there country, white for peace, and green for fertility. A Buddhist emble called a dharma charka lies in the center of the flag. The land India borders a lot like China, Nepal, and Bhutan (that is to the North). Pakistan to the west and Bangladesh to the East. 1 â€Å" India boasts many great mountain ranges, including the Vindhya Range, which divides northern and southern India. The Himalayan mountain range in northern India consists of some of the highest peaks in the world.† The climate 2 â€Å" India has about three main seasons – summer is one from March to May, the rainy season from June to September, and then winter from October to February.† 2 The plants and the animals India supports approximately 45,ooo plant species, some which are not found anywhere else in the world except here. India’s most well-known...

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Lost in a Dark World: John Milton’s “When I Consider How my Light is Spent” Essay

Being blind would be an incredibly hard thing to endure, and an even harder situation to describe to other people. In John Milton’s 1652 poem When I Consider How my Light is Spent the author uses imagery, symbols, and extended metaphors to express his feelings of going blind and how it relates to the serving of his god. In exploring the use of his imagery you must first know that John Milton was blind when he wrote this poem. All of the imagery used in his poem is functioning to help the reader get a better sense of what it might be like to be blind themselves. The â€Å"dark world† he describes in line two is an example of imagery. He uses these words to describe how his new life or world is; completely absent of light. He’s almost trying to say that he’s not blind, but that the world is just dark. You can see this in line one where he states â€Å"my light is spent.† As you can see Milton uses complicated word play throughout the poem, this brings me to his metaphors. Most of his metaphors are used to describe how being blind has affected his life as well as his ability to serve his god. He uses the word â€Å"light† many times in the poem but this word can be substituted out for the word vision. His vision is what he is referring to but he chooses to use the word light to express to the reader that he isn’t going blind, but that the light is running out which I pointed out earlier. The word â€Å"talent† used in line three has a double meaning. The Biblical parable about hiding the talent and not turning the master’s currency into a profit (described in the foot note) is used as an extended metaphor in which God is compared to the lord, while the speaker is the third servant who has buried the money. He feels that because he is blind he can no longer serve his god properly and is wondering if he should just end his life now. Finally Milton uses symbols throughout his poem to allude to the fact that he will not end his life, but that he will wait for his time and live out the rest of his life blind. One symbol can be seen in line eight where he capitalizes the word â€Å"Patience.† The word is capitalized to symbolize that patience is some sort of being that he has encountered, and that it is what has convinced him not to end his life. In line twelve he states â€Å"Thousands at his bidding speed†¦They also serve who only stand and wait.† The thousands mentioned symbolize angels who serve God in every length, and that they also serve ones who are patient. This is Milton’s justification for living out the rest of his life even though he doesn’t feel he can serve his god anymore. He will be patient. This poem has lots of word play mainly dealing with imagery, metaphors, and symbols, but when you analyze and break it all down it turns into a great poem that makes you reflect on how John Milton felt about his blindness. I believe this was his intent in writing this poem.

Monday, January 6, 2020

Adze a Tool For Working Wood

An adze (or adz) is a woodworking tool, one of several tools used in ancient times to perform carpentry tasks. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first Neolithic farmers used adzes for everything from felling trees to shaping and assembling wooden architecture such as roof timbers, as well as constructing furniture, boxes for two- and four-wheeled vehicles, and walls for subterranean wells.   Other essential tools for the ancient and modern carpenter include axes, chisels, saws, gouges, and rasps. Woodworking toolkits vary widely from culture to culture and time to time: the earliest adzes date from the Middle Stone Age period of about 70,000 years ago, and were part of a generalized hunting toolkit.   Adzes can be made of a wide variety of materials: ground or polished stone, flaked stone, shell, animal bone, and metal (typically copper, bronze, iron).   Defining Adzes Adzes are generally defined in the archaeological literature as distinct from axes on several bases. Axes are for hewing trees; adzes for shaping wood. Axes are set in a handle such that the working edge is parallel to the handle; the working edge of an adze is set to be  perpendicular to the handle.   Adzes are bifacial tools with a pronounced asymmetry: they are plano-convex in cross-section. Adzes have a domed upper side and a flat bottom, often with a distinct bevel towards the cutting edge. In contrast, axes are generally symmetrical, with biconvex cross sections. The working edges on both flaked stone types are wider than one inch (2 centimeters).  Ã‚   Similar tools with working edges of less than an inch are generally classified as chisels, which can have varied cross sections (lenticular, plano-convex, triangular). Identifying Adzes Archaeologically Without the handle, and despite the literature defining adzes as plano-convex in shape, it can be difficult to distinguish adzes from axes, because in the real world, the artifacts are not bought in a Home Depot but made for a specific purpose and perhaps sharpened or used for another purpose. A series of techniques have been created to ameliorate, but as yet not resolve, this issue. These techniques include:   Use-wear: the examination by macroscopic and microscopic techniques of the working edges of a tool to identify striations and nicks that have accumulated over its use-life and may be compared to experimental examples.  Plant residue analysis: the recovery of microscopic organic leavings including pollen, phytoliths, and stable isotopes from whatever plant was being worked.  Traceology: the examination by macroscopic and microscopic techniques of well-preserved pieces of wood to identify marks left behind by the woodworking process.   All of these methods rely on experimental archaeology, reproducing stone tools and using them to work wood to identify a pattern which might be expected on ancient relics.   Earliest Adzes Adzes are among the earliest type of stone tool identified in the archaeological record and recorded regularly in Middle Stone Age Howiesons Poort sites such as Boomplaas Cave, and Early Upper Paleolithic sites throughout Europe and Asia. Some scholars argue for the presence of proto-adzes in some Lower Paleolithic site—that is, invented by our hominid ancestors Homo erectus. Upper Paleolithic In the Upper Paleolithic of the Japanese islands, adzes are part of a trapezoid technology, and the make up a fairly small portion of the assemblages at such sites as the Douteue site in Shizuoka prefecture. Japanese archaeologist Takuya Yamoaka reported on obsidian adzes as part of hunting toolkits on sites dated approximately 30,000 years ago (BP). The Douteue site stone trapezoid assemblages as a whole were basally hafted and heavily used, before being left behind broken and discarded. Flaked and groundstone adzes are also regularly recovered from Upper Paleolithic sites in Siberia and other places in the Russian Far East (13,850–11,500 cal BP), according to archaeologists Ian Buvit and Terry Karisa. They make up small but important parts of hunter-gatherer toolkits.   Dalton Adzes Dalton adzes are flaked stone tools from Early Archaic Dalton (10,500–10,000 BP/12,000-11,500 cal BP) sites in the central United States. An experimental study on them by U.S. archaeologists Richard Yerkes and Brad Koldehoff found that the Dalton adzes were a new tool form introduced by Dalton. They are very common on Dalton sites, and usewear studies show they were heavily used, made, hafted, resharpened, and recycled in a similar fashion by several groups.   Yerkes and Koldehoff suggest that at the transition period between the Pleistocene and Holocene, changes in climate, particularly in hydrology and landscape, created a need and desire for river travel. Although neither Dalton wooden tools or dugout canoes from this period have survived, the heavy use of the adzes identified in the technological and microwear analysis indicates they were used for felling trees and likely manufacturing canoes.   Neolithic Evidence for Adzes While wood-working—specifically making wooden tools—is clearly very old, the processes of clearing woods, building structures, and making furniture and dugout canoes are part of the European Neolithic set of skills that were required for the successful migration from hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture.   A series of Neolithic wooden-walled wells dated to the Linearbandkeramik period of central Europe have been found and intensively studied. Wells are particularly useful for the study of traceology, because water-logging is known to preserve wood.   In 2012, German archaeologists Willy Tegel and colleagues reported evidence for a sophisticated level of carpentry at Neolithic sites. Four very well-preserved eastern German wooden well walls dated between 5469–5098 BCE provided Tegel and colleagues an opportunity to identify refined carpentry skills by scanning high-resolution images and producing computer models. They found that early Neolithic carpenters built sophisticated corner joins and log constructions, using a series of stone adzes to cut and trim the timber. Bronze Age Adzes A 2015 study on Bronze Age use of a copper ore deposit called Mitterberg in Austria used a very detailed traceology study to reconstruct woodworking tools. Austrian archaeologists Kristà ³f Kovà ¡cs and Klaus Hanke used a combination of laser scanning and photogrammetric documentation on a well-preserved sluice box found at Mitterberg, dated to the 14th century BCE by dendrochronology.   The photo-realistic images of the 31 wooden objects that made up the sluice box were then scanned for tool mark recognition, and the researchers used a workflow segmentation process combined with experimental archaeology to determine that the box was created using four different hand tools: two adzes, an axe, and a chisel to complete the joining.   Adzes Takeaways An adze is one of several woodworking tools used in prehistoric times to fell trees and construct furniture, boxes for two- and four-wheeled vehicles, and walls for subterranean wells.  Adzes were made of a variety of materials, shell, bone, stone and metal, but typically have a domed upper side and a flat bottom, often with a distinct bevel towards the cutting edge.The earliest adzes in the world date to the Middle Stone Age period in South Africa, but they became much more important in the Old World at the time of the emergence of agriculture; and in Eastern North America, to respond to climate change at the end of the Pleistocene.   Sources Bentley, R. Alexander, et al. Community Differentiation and Kinship among Europes First Farmers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.24 (2012): 9326–30. Print. Blà ¡ha, J. Historic Traceology as a Complex Tool for the Discovery of Lost Construction Skills and Techniques. WIT Transactions on The Built Environment 131 (2013): 3–13. Print. Buvit, Ian, and Karisa Terry. The Twilight of Paleolithic Siberia: Humans and Their Environments East of Lake Baikal at the Late-Glacial/Holocene Transition. Quaternary International 242.2 (2011): 379–400. Print. Elburg, Rengert, et al. Field Trials in Neolithic Woodworking – (Re)Learning to Use Early Neolithic Stone Adzes. Experimental Archaeology 2015.2 (2015). Print. Kovà ¡cs, Kristà ³f, and Klaus Hanke. Recovering Prehistoric Woodworking Skills Using Spatial Analysis Techniques 25th International CIPA Symposium. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2015. Print. Tegel, Willy, et al. Early Neolithic Water Wells Reveal the Worlds Oldest Wood Architecture. PLOS ONE 7.12 (2012): e51374. Print. Yamaoka, Takuya. Use and Maintenance of Trapezoids in the Initial Early Upper Paleolithic of the Japanese Islands. Quaternary International 248.0 (2012): 32–42. Print. Yerkes, Richard W., and Brad H. Koldehoff. New Tools, New Human Niches: The Significance of the Dalton Adze and the Origin of Heavy-Duty Woodworking in the Middle Mississippi Valley of North America. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 50 (2018): 69–84. Print.