Sheriff Obtains 3D Laser Scanner for Crime Scenes

Imagine pros­e­cu­tors and crim­i­nal defense attor­neys being able to vir­tu­ally walk a jury around a crime scene, so demon­strate their case. Seems that a North Carolina Sheriff’s Department is get­ting their hands on tech­nol­ogy capa­ble of doing just that.

The Iredell County com­mis­sion­ers had a diverse array of mat­ters come before them for action at their first board meet­ing of the new year Tuesday night.

The com­mis­sion­ers approved a request by the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office to pur­chase what is known as a 3-D scene dig­i­tizer for the county’s crime lab.

Chief Deputy Rick Dowdle told the com­mis­sion­ers that the $51,200 piece of equip­ment will help expe­dite crime scene investigations.

“It will help us get in and get out,” Dowdle said, and explained that the device would also be help­ful dur­ing crim­i­nal trials.

“It will give juries a vir­tual tour of the crime scene,” he said.

The dig­i­tizer will be pur­chased with fed­eral equity shar­ing funds, which largely derives from cash seized dur­ing drug busts.

Read the whole Moorseville Tribune arti­cle here.

If this is the same type of sys­tem I saw demon­strated (Leica Geosystems Scanstation 2) that was in use at the Albuquerque New Mexico Police Department Crime Lab, the sys­tem can do a lot more than sim­ply present jurors with a vir­tual walk through of the crime scene. They also allow for mea­sur­ing of dis­tances and angles at later dates.

What this means is that the crime scene tech­ni­cian can take two or three scans of the crime scene, and then fur­ther infor­ma­tion can be obtained from the scene, even after all police employ­ees have left. Days/weeks/months/years later. Forgot to mea­sure how high off the ground the bul­let strike was? No prob­lem, load up the crime scene scan file, take the mea­sure­ment in a mat­ter of seconds.

Generally 3D scan­ning is quicker to do than other types of crime scene doc­u­men­ta­tion, and it pro­vides a lot more use­ful data. This extra data will make crime scene recon­struc­tion all that much more accu­rate, reli­able, and eas­ier to explain to a jury.

The draw­back of course is expense. It costs more than a pad of paper and a few pen­cils. In this case though, it seems to be an excel­lent use of seized money, that oth­er­wise prob­a­bly could not be rolled into the local government’s “gen­eral funds.”