Bagging evidence

Once a piece of evidence has been photographed at a crime scene, following all the correct procedures, it can than be seized by a Scene of Crime Officer. Depending on the type of item the piece of evidence, whether it be biological, chemical or physical, will depending on how the item is contained. For example, when collecting biological evidence such as a sample of blood, in order to collect this type f evidence a cotton swab is used to collect the blood and than it is placed in to a small plastic container, than in to a plastic bag and sealed with tape. A phsycial piece of evidence such as a knife will be contained in a compact, plastic container which will be sealed with tape. This particular item will not be placed within a placed or paper bag as it is a sharp item, therefore it is put in to a comporsedcontainer so that the item can not move while being held within the container, in order to prevent any damage occuring to the item while in the container. When collecting different types of physical evidence such as an item of clothing, the item will be seized in to an appropriately sized bag depending on the size of the item of clothing. However, what type of bag the item of clothing is put in to will depend on whether the item of clothingis just phsycial evidnce or whetehr t contains wet, biological evidence upon it. Therefore, if the item is wet, biological evidence such as blood is upon the item, the piece of clothing will be placed in a paper bag, and if the item is dry or has no biological evidence upon it, it will be placed within a plastic bag, sealed with tape. Paper bags are mainly used when collecting physical evidence which has biological evidence upon it as the paper bag allows the biological evidence to dry without the biological evidence deteriorating. If a physical piece of evidence with biological evidence upon it was placed within a plastic bag, the condensation created within the bag due to the wet biological evidence would cause the biological evidence to deteriorate, leaving the piece of evidence not useful or reliable to be tested on.
Once the appropriate bagging method is used to place the item of evidence in, it is than sealed with JLAR tap. This tape is extremely sticky and if anyone has attempted to open the bag of evidence will find it very difficult to do so without cutting this tape. When the bag or container is taped numerous times, the initials of the SOCO, will be wrote half on the bag and half on the tape. This is so that when the piece of evidence is handed over to analysts they will be able to notice if any interference has occurred with the piece of evidence. As if someone has opened the bag and realised it, the initials of the SOCO will not match up from the bag to the tape. Therefore this will be a clear indicator that someone is interfering with the evidence. 
A tag is also placed upon the bag tapped over to secure it. This tag will be filled out by the Scene of Crime Officer stating where the piece of evidence was found, what types of evidence is it, who the evidence was seized by, what department the seizer of the evidene belongs too, a refernce number and a case number. These tags are used when bagging a piece of evidence as it states all the information needed when investigators are evaluating the validity of the evidence.



The O.J. Simpson Case


When Scene of Crime Officers bagged evidence that was collected from the scene, this was a proceidre that was not carried out efficiently. One of the main problems that occuredd when bagging evidence, was that evidence was not bagged appropiately to the type of evidence it was. Such as different blood swabs from different areas of the crime scene were all sealed together within the same bag. Therefore all the blood swab contaminated eachothere, therefore this evidence was not a reliable sorce to use within a court. Also biological evidence that was still wet was not placed in to papaer bags for the biological evidence todry, these items were placed within plastci bags, therefore this resulted in the biological evidence being unsifficent to use for analyse. As well many items of evidece were not tagged and if they were it was not correctly tagged. Therefore this meant that it was extremely hard to identify where the item was found at the crime scene and was Scene of Crime Officer seized the piece of evidence.

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