College Opens CSI Training Facility
Posted October 17, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
They walk along in white suits, cloaked in head to toe with protective gear. On the floor lies a body covered with blood. Fluid drips off the wall and there are shards of glass on the floor. It looks like a massacre has hit the home. But looks can be deceiving.
Welcome to a non-descript residence in Oshawa, a place you might not believe is a high tech school for students looking to break into the burgeoning world of forensic science – the kind of thing you normally see on TV shows like CSI. The University of Ontario’s Institute of Technology bought the place as a training facility for those learning the fine art of crime detection and evidence.
There are some amazing devices on display inside the dummy disaster area. One is a gizmo that appears to be a green flashlight. It allows these crimefighters-in-training to spot key but miniature fibres and fluids that aren’t visible to the naked eye. “It only emits one wavelength of light,” explains second year student Shannon Hill. “There’s different things you can pick up from the crime scene. The blood can tell you a lot. The positioning of the body or where you find fingerprints, what kind of fingerprints you’re finding.”
But not everything is quite so high tech. “What we’re using right here is a string method,” demonstrates Ashley Morrison, another second year veteran. “It shows the trajectory of the blood stain pattern. So … he was hit from very low to the ground and it splattered up.”
The location is the only so-called crime scene house in the province and now police are hoping to get in on the act. “Having a tool like this allows the students and our existing police officers to have an experience as close as morally possible to an actual crime scene,” outlines Inspector David Kimmerly of Durham Regional Police.
The program is almost as new as the house it now calls home. It’s only in its third year and all of those who graduate to the real thing will come away with a Bachelor of Science degree – and the ability to tell you why all that stuff you see on television doesn’t really work that way.
