CSI Training Helps Nail Bad Cops

Training may have been the undoing of the Atlanta police officers involved in the shooting death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston -- not only their training, but also the training of investigators who investigated them.

Poor training, possibly, in the case of the officers. (see: Police Chief Richard Pennington Defends Police Training)

And some of the best training in the world, in the case of the crime scene investigators.

In fact, the crime scene specialist with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who was in charge of that crime scene, one of the single most infamous and complex crime scenes ever in Metro Atlanta, had just returned, days before the shootings, from advanced CSI training.

"Because the more you learn, and the more you train," GBI Special Agent Cecil Hutchins told 11Alive News last week, "the better you become" at crime scene investigations.

On November 22, 2006, Atlanta police called in the GBI -- and the GBI called on Special Agent Hutchins -- to take over the crime scene at Johnston's home, at 933 Neal Street, NW. Atlanta Police narcotics officers, suspected later of being corrupt, had raided that home the night before, using a search warrant that, it is now known, they obtained by lying to a judge, claiming, falsely, that an informant had bought drugs at that address. Johnston, inside her home, apparently believing the undercover cops were criminals trying to break through her front door burglar bars, fired one shot from her pistol as they entered. The officers fired 39 rounds, mortally wounding Johnston, handcuffing her as she bled to death, and trying to cover up their crimes by, for example, planting marijuana in her home.

The next day, all the evidence inside the home would speak loud and clear to Hutchins. It would tell him the truth, not the cover-up.

"It's, to me, like footprints," he said of each crime scene investigation he conducts. "It eventually will lead back to the guilty party."

Hutchins, with 11 years' experience investigating crime scenes, was, on November 22, just back from ten-weeks of additional, intensive training at the elite, National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

"I learned new things," Hutchins said, that sharpened his crime scene instincts, "looking for the things that are not obvious," learning new tricks of the trade with other CSI specialists from law enforcement agencies across the country.

"It's a ten-week crime scene investigator training program, the only one of its kind in the world," said Amy Welch of the National Forensic Academy, who calls the specialized, CSI training a real-time pressure cooker ? designed for both the veterans and the rookies.

"So when we teach them about blood stains, we go set up a blood-stained house, or a mock crime scene house. When we teach you about arson, we burn down a house. We teach them about bombs -- we blow up a car. I mean, people are going back and solving cold cases because of what they learned here."

Hutchins learned, for example, new ways to analyze the trajectory of a bullet.

"It made me stronger in that area."

And within days of completing his training, Agent Hutchins found himself at 933 Neal Street, painstakingly tracing the trajectory of each round the officers had fired in their wild attack. And, at his lab at GBI headquarters in DeKalb County, he slowly, methodically processed all the crime scene evidence, helping build the case that would force confessions out of two officers, and bring a third to trial.

The National Forensic Academy steered Hutchins through practically every scenario he has already faced, on the job, as a crime scene specialist, with twists and surprises meant to challenge, and add to, his knowledge base.

"All areas of crime scene processing, such as photography, trajectory, blood splatter analysis, even removal of bodies."

The Academy uses a "body farm" of human bodies, decomposing for varying lengths of time, under all conditions, "where you would actually excavate real bodies from the ground."

U-T anthropology, anatomy and dentistry professors serve as consultants. So do entomologists, since insects at crime scenes can offer a wealth of information that can help CSI specialists determine when a person was murdered, and how.

"Such as maggots," Hutchins said without flinching, "the study of them, where and how long it takes for them to land on a body and grow from that point on."

Hutchins said that at every crime scene, foremost in his mind is being thorough, "not leaving any details unfinished."

Ask Hutchins whether there were any criminals who went to prison simply because he was able to find, at the crime scene, some small piece of evidence that might have escaped the untrained eye -- he is quick to answer.

"A rape investigation that resulted in a homicide. The murder of a female victim. I was able to examine the body for body fluids and utilize my experience in this area of crime scene as to where I would think the suspect may have handled the person, held the person. Looking at all areas, some of the areas where others didn?t really look. Looking for the things that are not obvious."

What he found was a tiny drop containing damning evidence against the suspect.

"I was able to find one drop of seminal fluid that resulted in a DNA match to the suspect, and which resulted, eventually, in the conviction of that person. Where, if you had not really been looking and using your knowledge and equipment, you would have missed it."

Hutchins said criminals are, often, fans of all the cops and courts TV shows, and think they know, from what the shows show, how to hide evidence at crime scenes to cover their tracks. They never can, he said.

"One thing they teach" at the Academy, he said, and which Hutchins, himself, could teach, is to "put yourself in the mind of the suspects or the subjects of the investigation you?re working or processing, and think the way they may think -- of how they may handle things? and you try to do that, and that way you can emulate what they may have done there, and look for that evidence that they thought they may have been clever enough to hide or to mislead you on."

Those TV shows, which are more popular than ever, make his career appear glamorous to the viewers.

"It's a lot of hard work, it's tedious, it's long," and sometimes thankless, he said. He once spent four days, straight, at a crime scene before he was sure he'd found every speck of evidence. "But if you do your work and enjoy it, you get a lot of gratification out of knowing that when you go into court and the person is convicted, then, that's thanks enough knowing that the [victim's] family has some type of closure to it."

And that's Hutchins' motivation for putting himself through all that tough, advanced training. Like the evidence he collects, the reason speaks for itself:

"Being able to speak for that person that's deceased," he said, "being able to bring the people who are involved to justice."

With a cop's intuition. And a scientist's skill. And the best CSI training in the world.

The GBI has now put all 15 of its crime scene specialists through the training, at a cost of $6,500 each, which includes the cost of tuition, supplies, lodging, food, and uniforms.

Police departments and Sheriff's offices across Georgia have also sent their officers and deputies to the Academy.

One of them, the Clayton County Police Department, put two crime scene investigators through the training in 2004.

"I wish I could send all my people through it," said Lt. Ken Still. Still said it's not easy for police departments to be without an officer who goes away for the ten-week training, but the results multiply through the department. "It brought a lot of new knowledge back to the department, with the graduates sharing it with the others."

Clayton County Police Department Investigator Gail Butler, with 21 years' experience investigating crime scenes, is one of the two from the department who graduated from the Academy. "The training expanded my knowledge so much," she said.

For example, she said she was astounded, during the training, to learn of the work of, and study under, Dr. Arpad Vass, a forensic scientist who taught her that by measuring the pH level and other properties of the soil underneath a decomposing body, an investigator can narrow down, to within hours, how long the body has been there, no matter how long it's been there.

"He blew me away with that," Butler said, calling those types of applied sciences crucial to the work she and her fellow investigators try to accomplish at crime scenes every day for the victims and their families, for the truth. "You've got to be ever so thorough" at a crime scene, whether it's establishing a single, crucial piece of information such as time of death, or ?that one hair, or that one fingerprint, or that one little thing" that takes a criminal off the streets.

"It's for the victims who can't talk for themselves," she said. "The evidence we collect speaks for them."

The Academy conducts only three, ten-week sessions a year, for only 18 law officers each session.

There is a waiting list. The Academy is booked through 2008.