[By DENA POTTER, Associated Press]
The investigator presses a button and a 3D image of two bodies on a front lawn pops up on the screen. He scrolls to the left and can see nearly 1,000 feet down the street, even though the scan was taken in total darkness. He scrolls on around and checks out a couple SUVs parked in the driveway.
With a few clicks, he can measure how far a body is from a light pole, isolate the basketball goal in the driveway to check it for bullet holes or arrange the view to check if the witness really could have seen the murder from the window in a house down the street.
It’s not a scene from the latest CSI show. It’s Virginia State Police’s newest investigative tool, and Lt. Joe Rader is showing a group of special agents how it works. The “bodies” are two family members he posed on the lawn.
Police have always documented crime scenes through photographs and meticulous measurements, but the agency’s newest gadget allows investigators to make instantaneous and permanent documentation of an entire crime scene like never before. It’s not a picture, but a high-definition, 360-degree scan that is accurate to within a quarter of an inch.
State Police Superintendent Col. W. Steven Flaherty said the laser scanner is “revolutionizing the documentation of crime scenes.”
“This technology practically stops time,” Flaherty said. “It allows investigators and prosecutors to come back days, weeks, and even years later to evaluate and examine a crime scene in exact detail as the crime scene originally appeared.”
The machine, a ScanStation C10, uses a high-speed laser and a built-in digital camera to capture a scene. The scanner measures 50,000 points per second – or 3 million measurements per minute – and completely digitizes the crime scene.
“If you took 1,000 measurements, we’re going to get 3 million,” Rader told the special agents.
It produces a 3D model that is uploaded, and investigators can take measurements, isolate items for in-depth review or put in the height of the witness or suspect to see exactly what they saw at the scene.
While the scanners have been used in high-end engineering for several years, more and more law enforcement agencies are starting to use them, said Tony Grissim, who handles public safety and forensic accounts for Leica Geosystems, which makes the C10. Still, he said fewer than 100 police agencies nationwide have laser scanners.
They’re also starting to show up in courtrooms as a way to place jurors in the middle of a crime scene. Scan data has been used in more than 100 cases nationwide, Grissim said.
The technology negates the so-called CSI Effect, where jurors expect sophisticated technology shown on popular forensic-themed television shows, he said.
“For the past 20 years these dramatic shows have been on television inventing forensic technology that doesn’t exist,” he said. “So jurors … come to court with these TV shows in their brain and they want to see something that’s cool.”
Grissim said defense attorneys also are starting to use the scans. In the future, pictures and floor plans on easels aren’t going to cut in it court.
“In five years if a cop shows up in court and he’s got a sketch that he did with pocket tape and then the defense shows up and they’ve got an exhibit that was created from scan data, the prosecutor’s going to get his lunch handed to him,” Grissim said.
The scans haven’t been used in Virginia courts yet, but likely will soon, Rader said.
State Police are the only Virginia agency that has a laser scanner. It used asset forfeiture money to cover the $220,000 cost, which included training, licensure, software and accessories.
“Equipment isn’t cheap,” Rader said, but “it really comes out to what you get versus what you pay for.”
The agency got the scanner in September, and Rader is one of eight investigators statewide trained to use it. They’ve used it to document more than a dozen crime scenes. It has been used to document the area around the University of Virginia where Morgan Harrington disappeared and the field where her body was found, a mid-air collision and the Vansant scene in March where a man killed two deputies and injured two others before being shot by police.
“It opens up the doors for investigators, prosecutors and potential jurors to see the scene as it truly was during the investigation,” he said. “Really, there is no limit to what this machine can be used for.”
See the original post here: http://www2.wsls.com/news/2011/apr/30/state-police-3d-scanner-captures-crime-scenes-ar-1005746/