CSI: Charlottetown
Charlottetown police now have state-of-theart technology that will process crime scenes
Charlottetown Police Services will soon be using state-of-theart technology to process crime scenes.
Officers were being trained this past week on the Faro, a laser scanner that creates 3D images of crime scenes.
Eugene Liscio, president of the International Association of Forensic and Security Metrology, was conducting the training. He also owns his own company, A123D, a consulting company that specializes in 3D forensic reconstructions.
“I work with 3D technologies to reconstruct homicides and accident scenes and things like that,” Liscio said after members of the Charlottetown force took part in some training at the Alexandra Rifle Range just outside Stratford. “Part of my job is that I go out and train police agencies on the use of the laser scanner.”
Part of the training being conducted involved officers firing rounds into a car. Then, the Faro was used to document the trajectory of the bullets.
“This is a very versatile tool. There’s many things you can do with it, like blood stain pattern analysis, you can do things like bullet trajectories, general crime scene documentation. You can couple this with video, for example, suspect height analysis (and) you can do things like you would see on a real estate website like virtual tours . . . (so) now you can have a virtual crime scene.” The Faro rotates around 360 degrees capturing millions of points per second. It can process images from inside or outside a home, on highways, pretty much anywhere. “Charlottetown police have this instrumentation so, in terms of crime scene documentation, they have some technology that puts them right at the forefront, which is nice to see.”
The Faro will cost the Charlottetown force in the vicinity of $70,000 U.S., perhaps a bit more or less depending on the accuracy and range it wants from the device it purchases.
Sgt. Dean Field of Charlottetown Police Services, said it’s a great tool for officers to have in their arsenal now.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for the force to purchase this equipment,” Field said. “It will definitely be utilized. This puts us at the forefront of technology, which is nice for a change.” Liscio said the technology won’t only be an asset for police. It’ll also be essential for juries. “When (a case) finally comes to a trial . . . you’re really giving a much more objective picture of a crime scene,” Liscio said. “You’re documenting the evidence in a subjective manner and you’re not missing as much either because this captures so much data and locks it away.
“You can always go back and look at something and you can always go back in the future and measure something as well so there’s a lot of benefits to having the tool.”