CSI Miami Episode #706 “Wrecking Crew”

For a more detailed episode review check here.

Before we get to the foren­sic points of inter­est this episode, can some­one please explain to me why crime scene inves­ti­ga­tors were guard­ing an eye wit­ness who was hid­den away in a safe house? Aren’t there any less qual­i­fied mem­bers of the force that could per­form that func­tion? Most labs I know couldn’t afford to have lab­o­ra­tory staff out on a babysit­ting mis­sion. Most CSIs wouldn’t want to use their exper­tise babysit­ting a wit­ness tar­geted for death.

I also wanted to add that while I appre­ci­ate that Miami is the most action ori­ented fla­vor of the CSI fran­chise, what was with the spe­cial effects in the episode opener? The scene where the lethal crane smashes through the high rise wall and Calleigh stunt dri­ves and rolls out of the way to safety looked worse than your typ­i­cal Sci-Fi Channel spe­cial effect.

Maybe the most dis­ap­point­ing part of the episode was that Horatio quote came after the intro­duc­tory cred­its. And here’s my rant… Let’s face it, there’s a pretty reli­able for­mula for CSI Miami, and cru­cial to that for­mula is Horatio’s trade­mark pithy one-liner rolling out right before the scream and open­ing credit theme song. I mean, the scream right after the cheese­ball line actu­ally makes the line work! You wait for it, you antic­i­pate it. Heck, it’s half the show, and CSI Miami afi­ciona­dos expect it to hap­pen where it’s sup­posed to hap­pen. Joel McHale of “The Soup” lam­poons Horatio’s intro lines reg­u­larly, and the inter­net has video mon­tages galore fea­tur­ing Horatio’s “Best Of” (see my pre­vi­ous episode review — CSI Miami Episode # 620 “Down to the Wire” for an exam­ple). Maybe they shook up the for­mula for dra­matic effect, then gave a weak attempt at pla­cat­ing us by putting the Horatio-ism right after the com­mer­cial break. Or maybe the orig­i­nal edit had it in there like nor­mal, but Horatio’s corny “Biggest mur­der weapon in Miami” on the heels of the com­i­cal spe­cial effects and stunt dive had even the show’s pro­duc­ers laugh­ing out loud.

A small betrayal, but they quickly fell back into the tried and true for­mula. After recov­er­ing from my ini­tial dis­ap­point­ment, I had some thoughts on the episode’s ver­i­ta­ble foren­sic buf­fet offered up for our enjoyment:

Biological sam­ples and instant DNA pro­file search results.….. x2!!

DNA:

We had not one, but two instant DNA pro­file results pop-up on the lab com­puter as soon as the inves­ti­ga­tor walked into the room (couldn’t they make this even faster with a mobile DNA Hummer?). Timing is every­thing in Miami. The first was a CoDIS (Combined DNA Index System) hit to the blood sam­ple found in the crane, turned out to be a dead end. The sec­ond pro­file was from the neck strap of the remote con­trol box for the crane (made using instruc­tions found on the inter­net — isn’t every­one on the inter­net? ). Oddly, and to Calleigh’s dis­be­lief, the sec­ond pro­file wasn’t in CoDIS. I couldn’t believe it either, quite unusual in CSI shows. Then the pro­file was run against the elim­i­na­tion sam­ples in the case, and thanks to DNA it was instantly dis­cov­ered the victim’s own son was at the con­trols of the crane that killed him.

3-D pho­tog­ra­phy accu­rately iden­ti­fies tire tread imprints:

News flash: inves­ti­ga­tors no longer need to take cast­ings of impressed evi­dence at crime scenes! Using the fan­tas­tic inno­va­tions seen here on CSI Miami, they can now take 3-D pho­tographs at the scene, wire­lessly upload the image to a state-of-the-art mobile A/V Hummer, and accu­rately iden­tify the ori­gin of the evi­dence. Amazing. ‘Nuff said.

Automotive paint identification:

Paint trans­fers located on glass recov­ered from the crime scene is iden­ti­fied as only orig­i­nat­ing from one make and model of vehi­cle. That paint led the CSIs to the pre­cise per­son in all of Miami they needed to pull in for inter­ro­ga­tion. When you can nar­row down one per­son out of maybe half a mil­lion res­i­dents in Miami based on paint, that’s a lucky break to say the least.

High-quality 911 recording:

I don’t know how many of you are like me, and have had the plea­sure of lis­ten­ing to 911 call record­ings. My expe­ri­ence hasn’t lead me to believe they’re the high­est qual­ity audio. In this episode though, a man on his cell phone whis­per­ing to 911 while hid­ing in a bath­room stall resulted in audio qual­ity clear enough to deter­mine the back­ground sound of a flush­ing toi­let hap­pened in the very next stall over from the caller. Mind you, this was in a loud club, lots of restroom stalls, and plenty of ambi­ent back­ground noise on top of what­ever qual­ity of cell recep­tion the caller had at the time.

Advanced latent print development:

We’ve seen this before in the series, but in this case it was applied to an inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tion. A shell cas­ing recov­ered from the club’s sewage lines (after sit­ting for unspec­i­fied days, even weeks?) was cleaned, and micro­scopic oxi­da­tion on the cas­ing walls could be visu­al­ized using mag­netic pow­der. Now latent prints are out­side my spe­cific area of foren­sic exper­tise, but if it’s an actual tech­nique, I’ve never heard of it used in a case. If it is real, that’s one pow­er­ful tech­nique, and latent print pro­cess­ing should be used on ALL recov­ered shell cas­ings in cases.

Trace recov­ered on the head of shovel:

Ryan found melted quartz/silica gran­ules with traces of kerosene on the shovel. This lead him to deduce the miss­ing body was buried on a beach some­where near a camp­fire. Of course Horatio knew exactly what beach, impres­sive for any foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tor since Miami boasts a whop­ping 35 mile stretch of beach­front. Cop instincts at work I guess.

White Lilly pollen:

Lilly pollen found on the body buried in the beach was not only detected, but also iden­ti­fied. Horatio didn’t need to have the species of Lilly iden­ti­fied, he just used his cop instincts. That’s impres­sive. I’ve worked with numer­ous trace evi­dence ana­lysts, and I’m sure they could iden­tify some­thing as pollen, but being able to say it’s Lilly pollen takes some skill, prob­a­bly a botanist, and they don’t typ­i­cally work in crime labs.

So there’s the foren­sics, and it was a great episode from a foren­sic point of view. They hit on a lot of dif­fer­ent tech­niques, and a lot of dif­fer­ent technologies.

Like I said ear­lier, except for the open­ing blip, the episode kept true to CSI for­mula. When Mick was first ques­tioned about the dam­age to his car from the falling glass, he was hon­estly able to explain he wasn’t the killer crane oper­a­tor. Alarms went off in my head instantly because this is typ­i­cal CSI. I knew Mick was def­i­nitely guilty of some­thing, but we don’t find out of what until the end. A rou­tine plot pro­gres­sion in the CSI fran­chise is that a sus­pect is inter­viewed, log­i­cally explains how the inves­ti­ga­tors have the wrong guy, and inevitably they do. Only at the end do we see that the inves­ti­ga­tors had the right guy, just the wrong crim­i­nal act. Here Mick only shot and kid­napped the guy from the club’s bath­room, some­one else com­mit­ted the mur­der using the “Biggest mur­der weapon in Miami.”