Patrolling for Clues

Andy Goldbaum 3/8/18 CE 18 D Even

McFadden, Chad. “Patrolling for Clues.” Forensic Magazine, Advantage Business Media © Copyright 2018 Advantage Business Media, 7 Mar. 2018, www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/03/patrolling-clues.

“Patrolling for Clues”, an article written by Chad McFadden in Forensic Magazine, explains in detail how crime scene and accident reconstructionist of the Washington State Patrol Rod Green is revolutionizing the reconstruction process. He developed an efficient technology that integrates the entire process of accident reconstruction by using a combination of hardware, software and procedures in the field centered around the concept of forensic scanning. Although Green’s achievement has gained significant attention from many in Washington as well as other surrounding states, Green was merely innovating on a technology that has existed for 20 years but was never superior enough in terms of efficiency, safety, and its ability to produce clear, thorough and detailed results for a jury to replace the outdated manual ones: total station measurement and baseline-and-offset techniques. These would require multiple people to capture and record data when they could spend their time working on other aspects of the investigation, total stations could take as long as six hours, congesting busy roads just to take the measurements, and was proven to be far less detailed in a test against Green’s laser technology despite taking more than four times as long. All of this matters when investigators have to waste drivers’ time, risk their own lives in traffic, and be efficient while doing their jobs. Now, detailed reconstructions of the scene are possible because Green equipped his new laser with not only the ability to adjust resolution, but with recommendations of resolutions for any given scene so that tiny details like shell casings can be acquired while scenes that require less resolution are taken significantly faster at lower resolution. Additionally, the multiple-man job of holding spherical targets of places at a crime scene so that the scene could be connected and modeled was now eliminated because “cloud to cloud” and “plane based” registration within the software already merges multiple scans, millions of points at a time, rapidly connecting the scene in far greater detail. Thirdly, Green’s laser scanner was designed with an easily confused jury in mind: the scanner can record the scene in “layers” so that only relevant aspects of the crime can be presented to the jury by turning off parts of the scene with irrelevant information, and density can also be lowered at irrelevant points of the scene to reduce clutter. Lastly, the scanner can preserve the scene permanently while it is fresh so that irrelevant physical evidence suddenly deemed relevant can be revisited at any time. All it took were a few innovations to make laser technology the superior choice to old, outdated manual methods.

Although visionaries and inventors are the most glorified people in our society, Green reminds us that common sense innovation can be worth just as much as an invention. This is especially true in a field like forensics that integrates ideas from many different scientific fields. For example, Green’s use of “layers” that can be revisited within an image is by no means far-fetched: I used that concept in middle school art class while experimenting with photoshop on a Mac. This is quite standard in digital imaging. Secondly, isn’t the walkthrough feature that allows the jury a clear view of a crime scene the same thing as what Google Maps uses to virtually explore cities at a more sophisticated level? What makes forensics such a rapidly expanding field is that it uses the advantages of labor specialization: people who are already deeply expert in one very specific, even esoteric area can be useful in solving a case by applying their knowledge to difficult aspects of said case.

This was a very well-written article because of how McFadden bothered to explain the connection of this innovation not just to humanity, but to the field of forensics as well. For example, he describes the many difficulties within the line of work that Green addressed before describing the innovation itself by addressing the fact that the investigators at a crime scene have to focus on not burdening the public, documenting in thorough detail a crime scene just as it happened in inclement weather and dangerous traffic conditions all well being extremely careful to maintain the chain of custody of evidence. By using this context, McFadden persuaded me to care about a topic I was not already interested in by showing how remarkable Green’s innovation was. However, I would have loved for McFadden to describe what exactly some of the terms were, such as “cloud-to-cloud” and “plane based” registration and how exactly they work to make a multiple-man job so easy. If these terms were explained a little more thoroughly, and if the prior method of total station measurement was actually described as a basis for comparison, the article would have been even stronger by enhancing learning.