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b.
Secure the Scene
Once it has been established that human life is not in danger, the officer in
charge must 
 
secure the scene
. The immediate goal is to 
 
do no harm
. However
compromised the evidence might be at the start of an investigation, respon-
sible personnel must take all precautions to protect it from further deterio-
ration. A primary tenet in the collection of crime scene evidence is to prevent
any further compromise of the evidence beyond what has already resulted
from the crime and its aftermath.
We frequently refer to the catchall expression of 
 
responsible personnel
,
but who does this really include? The short answer is anyone with authority
connected, however remotely, to the scene or the evidence. “It is not my job”
is simply not acceptable from anyone at any point in the investigation.
Defining a physical domain within which an illegal act occurred is the
first step in processing a crime scene. Securing the area usually involves
demarcating some reasonable vicinity surrounding the immediate crime
scene to preserve it as well as possible until evidence can be recognized and
collected. The functional perimeter of the scene or scenes must be established,
and only essential personnel should be allowed inside the scene perimeter.
The fewer people in the scene, the less chance of accidental contamination
or destruction of potentially important evidence.
But how do we determine the physical boundaries of a crime scene? In
actuality, practicality plays a large role. The detective may find it convenient
to tow a vehicle, tape off a house and its yard, or maybe even a city block,
for a short time. But evidence does not recognize natural or urban borders.
A person might be murdered in one house and the body dragged across
and calmly reached into a tall bush and extracted the empty bottle. Detectives gratefully accepted the
gift, and immediately placed it into an evidence bag.
As the on-tape interview was ending, one detective asked what they had done with this particular
victim’s personal belongings. The suspect responded that they had thrown away the clothing, but that
Bonin had given him the school ID card of the victim and told him to dispose of it. When detectives
asked where he had dumped it, the suspect replied that he had thrown it through the floorboards of
the shed on the back of his property. Remembering the chloral hydrate bottle, they asked him to show
them exactly where he had disposed of the ID. Once in the shed, and always talking, the suspect said
that he had simply slipped it down into one of the cracks in the floor. “In fact,” he said, leaning down
and placing his fingers into a crack, “Here it is!” As he stood up, he held the card in his hands, and
the camera zoomed in on the name and face of one of the victims in the case. Detectives were practically
fainting at this 
 
ad lib
on-camera demonstration by the suspect.
This would have made fabulous press in Los Angeles, but it never got to that point. The suspect
committed suicide in jail, and the videotape was ruled inadmissible at Bonin’s trial. It does, however,
highlight an interesting use of videotape to document a crime scene.
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Good Field Practice — Processing a Crime Scene
201
several lots to be dumped in another yard, the obvious crime scene. It is not
uncommon for a crime to encompass more than one geographic area. For
example, in 
 
People v. Simpson
,* at least three scenes were identified: his house
(on Rockingham Drive), her house (on Bundy Drive), and his white Ford
Bronco.
Not only may multiple scenes be associated with the crime, we must
consider their relationship in time and space. The original crime scene where
the murder took place may be located and secured in fairly short order, but
the path between the two crime scenes (e.g., 
 
People v. Simpson
, the drive
between the two houses in the Bronco), which may hold valuable blood,
fiber, or print evidence, may never be recognized, much less secured. Even
if the connection between the two crime scenes is finally established, the path
between them may have already been so compromised that any evidence
collected cannot be presumed to relate to the crime (e.g., in 
 
People vs. Sim-
pson
, credit card receipts from the Bronco were stolen by the tow truck driver,
potentially compromising blood evidence eventually recognized in the vehi-
cle (
 
People v. Simpson,
July 19). Multiple scenes, and boundaries defined out
of practicality, are only two of the limitations of crime scene work that must
be understood and acknowledged. In these days of easy mobility, a crime
may encompass several different scenes of varying environments, which may
easily cross interstate or even international borders.
Once the commission of a crime has been established and the scene
secured, the criminalist must look toward eventually translating the legal
questions into science questions. The goal is always to establish links between
evidence and reference items (
 
classification
or 
 
individualization
), 
 
associations
between different source and target items, and sometimes a 
 
reconstruction
of
the events. Because association is prerequisite to reconstruction, procedures
at the crime scene aim to preserve the integrity of evidence items and infor-
mation about their relationships to each other. Remember that reconstruc-
tion does not mean generating a moment-by-moment videotape; rather, it
refers to ordering items and events in space and time. Any number or manner
of circumstances may confound any step in this process. Crime scene per-
sonnel are charged with preserving the scene and the evidence so that, no
matter what may have occurred previous to recognition of the scene as a
crime scene, any further deterioration or compromise of the evidence is
minimized. The reconstruction will almost never be concluded at the scene.
It will often not be completed until months or, not uncommonly, years later,
when all of the analyses have been completed, the hypotheses articulated,
* We refer to the case of 
 
People v. Simpson
throughout this chapter because the circum-
stances are well known and the transcripts readily available. Certainly, similar situations
are represented in other less well-documented cases. 
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202
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
and the assumptions identified. This is only one of the reasons documenta-
tion must be carried out extensively and compulsively.