CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. –
The special agent got a call from the security forces desk sergeant early the morning of Oct. 17 -- a crime scene needed investigating.
When agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations Detachment 310 arrived on the scene of the exercise they found a simulated dead man -- presumably killed by a gunshot wound -- with a handgun near him, a number of empty beer cans and bottles, and a note.
This was the situation presented to agents from AFOSI Det. 310 during a crime scene investigation exercise held in base housing Oct 17. Their job was to identify, triangulate, photograph, tag and bag the evidence.
Ashlee Wega, the AFOSI forensic science consultant for the southeast U.S., conducted the two-day training.
"This training is for proper scene preservation and documentation and evidence collection," said Agent Wega.
The first step agents have is identifying evidence at the scene. Shell casings, fluids, notes, weapons and fingerprints would all be considered evidence. Then they need to triangulate the evidence on a sketch of the scene. Agents plot the scene on graph paper with exact locations of all evidence on the sketch.
The evidence is then photographed from multiple angles with rulers in the photos to accurately portray the size of the items. Then the items are numbered and tagged and sealed in waterproof bags.
Typically a crime scene will take four to six hours to process but that's just the initial work. Reports need to be written and filed and most cases will go on for nine months or more, said Special Agent Phil Sutsko, AFOSI Det. 310.
The exercise was an opportunity for the AFOSI agents and members of the 437th Security Forces Squadron and the 437th Airlift Wing Law Center to work together.
"It's good to have face-to-face contact with the people we'll be working with if something like this happens for real," said Special Agent Jeremy Meng, AFOSI Det. 310.
The first day of training was mostly classroom work where the agents and their counterparts with the 437 SFS reviewed procedures for suicides, homicides, assault and sexual assault cases, fingerprinting, drug-related crimes and evidence custody.
The AFOSI detachment plans on doing more similar exercises in the future and involving more base agencies to further enhance the realism and inter-agency cooperation, said Agent Sutsko.