First Attending Officer

Roles and Responsibilities

When a crime has been reported to a telephone adviser in some cases if the crime is serious enough police officers and other emergency services will be sent out. In the scenario of a serious crime the first police officer to attended the scene of the crime is called the First Attending Officer (FAO). Depending on the crime that has been committed will depend on what roles the FAO will carry out. The first attending officer is crucial to whether they make or break the crime scene as their actions will dictate the overall investigation. In the case of a murder scene the FAO will firstly attended to any victims at the crime scene to make sure that they are safe and if need be carry out any first aid before emergency medical services arrive. Than when other police officers or other emergency services such as paramedics or and ambulance arrive at the scene they will take over and the FAO will return to their roles. Such as, the first attending officer will cordon off the crime soon in order to prevent any evidence at the crime scene being contaminated. The officer will also check for exit and entry points that the suspect may have used, this is when the FAO will set up a common approach path (CAP). This path will guide any emergency services that arrive at the scene to follow a certain path to prevent contaminating any crucial evidence to the investigation. As important as it is for the first attending officer to corden off the scene and set up a common approach path it is also very important to gather any witnesses that were around the scene so that witness statements can be taken. 




The O.J. Simpson Case

In the murder case of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman it was Robert Riske who was the first attending officer at the crime scene. Mark Fuhrman arrived shortly afterwards and was the first detective to arrive at the crime scene. As Riske was the first attending officer at the scene it was his responsibility to make sure that the crime scene was corned off as soon as possible. However when Fuhrman arrived at the scene as first attending detective it was his responsibility to check that Riske had corned off the scene and set up a CAP correctly. As this was not done this lead to the emergency services team and other police officers who arrived late to the scene to contaminate crucial evidence by walking over it. Due to their careless actions and lack of professionalism extremely important evidence was contaminated which than lead to a lack of investigation leads in order to catch the suspect.