Post by ReconPWN on Oct 26, 2013 5:16:40 GMT
NOVA Forensics Training Guide
Introduction: (Airborne1st)
Welcome to SPECTRE. In this guide, you'll learn both the basics and the advanced methods of gathering forensic evidence, testing a wide array of forensic evidence, DNA study, and many other things that you will use out in the field as a NOVA Forensics unit. Being a part of this team requires you to think outside of what you see before you, in order to make connections that could be the difference in successfully closing a case, or having an unsolved one. This training guide will start with the most basic concepts you will learn as an entry level member to SPECTRE, and will gradually introduce you to the more advanced concepts as you progress.
SPECTRE Conduct, Rules, and General Information (ReDrUm)
- Your CCA rank has little to nothing to do with your NOVA Forensics Team rank. Just because you're an 01 doesn't mean that you're a Senior Investigator. The ranks are seperate from CCA ranks. The CCA ranks mentioned in the training manifest are there for a guideline, and a general idea of when you'd be getting promoted.
- While in the lab, or on a crime scene, the NOVA Forensics Team member holding the highest NOVA Forensics Team rank is in charge. Despite your CCA rank, if they are a higher rank then you in the NOVA Forensics Team, you obey their orders. (This is limited to orders to do with Forensics. Etiquette rules still apply. Even if you have an 01 who is a trainee, and you're an 02 who is a Senior Investigator, you must still salute the 01 in the lab.)
- Never, under any circumstances, distribute any case information to anyone, including other units. (Exception for High Command. If someone in High Command asks you about a case, you must disclose the information.) Distribution of case information will result in punishment.
- No one, including CCA units, may enter a crime scene without either being: A.) NOVA Personnel, B.) High Command, C.) Approved by the highest standing member of NOVA on the case. If a unit who is not permitted to enter does enter the crime scene, then you are to tell them to leave. (You don't need to be disrespectful about it.) If they refuse, or try to tell you that you can't tell them to leave due to your CCA rank being lower than them, you are to report to 280, who will handle the situation accordingly.
For citizens, entering a crime scene without permission is a level 3 offence. Entering a crime scene, and touching any sort of evidence is a level one offence. (Please remember that you need to be an 01+ to authorize level 1 verdicts.) - ALL cases are to be logged in the database.(// www.catalyst-gaming.net/index.php?topic=15298.0) They are NOT optional, and must be done whenever a case is opened.
- // For test results, you often have to OOCly obtain information. For example, if you ICly don't know who a victim is, you may collect blood samples, test them, and then come back with a result of who the blood belongs to (The victim.) It is then okay to ask the suspect OOCly who the victim is. This is NOT to be abused. You can't walk around a crime scene and be like "loldna". This is to be used to enhance RP, and if I find out you're using this to abuse in anyway, you will be kicked out of NOVA, and possibly punished by admins. YOU MUST TALK TO THE SUSPECT OOCLY TO SEE IF THEY LEFT ANY EVIDENCE BEHIND.
- //Use a piece of paper around crime scenes that notes that it's a crime scene. Props attract citizens, and are likely to walk through rope, which could end up getting them amputated. You need to put a piece of paper out saying that it's a crime scene so that they know not to enter, we can't expect them to be psychic.
- Leaving the NOVA Forensics Team, by choice, or by being kicked out, will result in a memory wipe of all information about Forensics and any cases you have worked on.
- Remember your training.
- //Due to people getting mad over their characters getting PKed because of us, and changing their story to "There was no evidence left behind" even though they told us there was, it is now REQUIRED that when someone admits OOCly or through /its that there was evidence left behind that we could find, you MUST screenshot it. (F12 in game for those of you who don't know) Copy/pasting chat logs will not do, because they can easily be altered. The only thing that can't be disputed are screenshots. If you fail to do this, the case will be voided and you will be kicked out of NOVA. I'm not letting NOVA get shutdown because someone got mad and decided to change their story.
SPECTRE Rank Authorizations (ReDrUm)
Trainee
Participate in investigations with Entry Level Investigator+ Permission
Enter Crime Scenes
Conduct Forensic Tests with Supervision
Enter Crime Scenes
Conduct Forensic Tests with Supervision
Access forensic case logs that they are involved in. (This means only the ones you're involved in investigating)
Entry Level Investigator
Initiate an Investigation
Conduct Forensic Tests
Access forensic case logs that they are involved in. (This means only the ones you're involved in investigating)
Train trainees
Conduct Forensic Tests
Access forensic case logs that they are involved in. (This means only the ones you're involved in investigating)
Train trainees
Basic Investigator
Initiate an Investigation
Conduct Forensic Tests
Authorize entrance to a crime scene (If highest rank on case)
Access all forensic case logs
Conduct Forensic Tests
Authorize entrance to a crime scene (If highest rank on case)
Access all forensic case logs
Train Entry Level Investigators and Trainees
Senior Investigator
Initiate an Investigation
Conduct Forensic Tests
Authorize access to any crime scene
Train Trainees, Basic, and Entry level investigators
Promote Trainees and Basic level investigators. (You cannot promote Entry level investigators to senior investigators.)
Access all forensic case logs
Conduct Forensic Tests
Authorize access to any crime scene
Train Trainees, Basic, and Entry level investigators
Promote Trainees and Basic level investigators. (You cannot promote Entry level investigators to senior investigators.)
Access all forensic case logs
Basic Concepts of Gathering Evidence (Airborne1st)
This chapter will inform you on the proper methods of gathering evidence from a crime scene, on a basic scale. After being qualified in this chapter, you will able to assist more experienced members of the team in gathering evidence. The following are the major points to keep in mind when on the scene, and these will be demonstrated to you in a hands on training environment presented by your NOVA Forensics team trainer.
[li]Don't always be so quick to rule out evidence and small things. Sometimes, the smallest things make the biggest difference in a case. Always have an open mind when conducting an investigation.
- Before entering a crime scene area, make sure you know the situation well enough. What are you dealing with? Was it a murder? An assault? An abduction? Is the crime scene large? Or a small room? These are the sort of things you want to get a general idea of before you begin doing anything physically on the crime scene.
- If possible, have another member (preferably a more experienced one) with you when you respond to the scene of a crime. In most cases, a more experienced member will contact you asking for you to tag along.
- As a member of the NOVA Forensics team, you will be given special equipment designed specifically for making your job easier. Use this equipment to your advantage.
- Never let emotions get in the way of an investigation.
[li]Don't always be so quick to rule out evidence and small things. Sometimes, the smallest things make the biggest difference in a case. Always have an open mind when conducting an investigation.
Now, onto what you've been waiting for... Actual methods of gathering evidence.
- Always be sure your forensic supplies are well stocked before you visit a crime scene to conduct an investigation.
- Before stepping into the crime scene, mark off the area with NOVA Forensics crime scene markers. (This is the roll of tape you'll be given as part of your supplies)
- If there is a door to the entrance of the scene, get every fingerprint you can from the door, mainly the handle. Do this to both sides of the door.
- Upon entering the scene, take a moment to just observe your surroundings, rather than just jumping right in.
- Look for things around the crime scene, such as a murder weapon or note, or anything at all that the killer and/or victim may have come in contact with. Anything you find that may have been touched by either the killer or victim is to be bagged as evidence and kept with you, where you will drop it off in the forensics lab for testing. Be sure to never take your gloves off and touch anything at the scene of a crime, and be sure your gloves are clean and sterile before gathering any evidence.
- When checking any body, take notes on everything. Include the victim's sex, race, eye color, approximate height and weight, shoe size, any particular features of the body that stand out, and give a general physical description of both the body, and the condition its in, as well as the position it is in.
- Be sure to gather useful evidence from any body found on a crime scene such as their fingerprints, blood samples, saliva (if any is present), tissue samples, hair fibers, any dirt or other matter from under the fingernails, and an approximate length of time the body has been dead.
- Look at the body and try to make an inference (if its not obvious) on how the victim was killed. Was it with a blunt object? A blade? A firearm? Try to determine these things, even when you don't have a murder weapon.
- Look for obvious things that can make your job easier, such a Citizen Identification Card on the body.
- Make sure you've checked each room or area at a crime scene for evidence you can bring back to the forensics lab for testing. As a rule of thumb, if you think it may be relevant, bring it back. Check each commonly used surface in the area for fingerprints, blood evidence, or any other sort of bodily fluid or organic substance before leaving.
- When a senior forensics team member gives the order to wrap it up, go through the area one last time to make sure everything has been checked out and all evidence has been gathered before leaving the scene.
- When you arrive at the forensics lab, lay out all of the physical evidence you've gathered in the appropriate area. Any data information you've taken with your forensics datapad will be uploaded to the system's database.
Basic Testing Procedure (Airborne1st)
This chapter covers the basics of testing the common forms of evidence found on crime scenes. DNA testing will be left out of this segment, and will be introduced in a later chapter. You will learn how to test fingerprints, blood samples, hair fibers, and tissue samples and match them with those recorded in our database.
When testing evidence, put on your forensics lab coat and put on your sterile latex gloves instead of your usual gloves. Test each bit of evidence one at a time and have patience. Thanks to the technology we have available, testing evidence is much easier than you're probably expecting. This guide will go over the technique for testing the different types of evidence you'll be expected to deal with at the entry level of the forensics team.
When testing blood evidence, avoid allowing it to come in contact with anything other than sterile forensics testing tools and equipment. If you have a liquid blood sample you're testing, you can simply place it in an analyzer, which will break down the sample and present the blood type, sugar levels, and contents (% of plasma, water, platelets, etc.), and the DNA analysis for you. From here, you'll have to match the blood type with the victim. This relies on DNA, which the analyzer will take care of for you. If you don't have a liquid blood sample to work with, specialized DNA testing will need to be done by an experienced member of the team. If the victim was infected by some sort of virus, you can take a slide and place a droplet of the blood on it and examine it under a microscope. Examining the types of cells you see will allow you to determine if any viruses are present in the blood stream of the victim, assuming they're blood-born pathogens.
When testing tissue samples, you want to first make sure the tissue is cell-rich, which will yield the best results. If not, retrieve other tissue from the body after its recovered from the scene. You should take this tissue from within the body, such as from the liver or muscle. These tests are important to show the age of the body in terms of how long it has been dead. If the tissue is still pliable, the body is less than three hours old. If it is rigid and stiff, rigormortis has set in, which will be obvious from how stiff the body will be. Rigormortis begins to set in after three hours of being deceased, and will reach peak stiffness around twelve hours and relax again after seventy-two hours. Use this as a guideline to determine how long a body has been dead, as well as the conditions its in. Tissue samples will also show if the body has been laying in water, or in extremely hot conditions, or extremely cold conditions. Tissue samples tell you about the environment the body has been exposed to. Using an analyzer on the tissue samples can often narrow down the conditions for you by showing if the body has been submerged and the tissue has absorbed water, or other things of that nature.
This is one of the easiest things to test, since it relies heavily on Universal Union technology given to us, which makes our job much easier. When gathering fingerprints from the scene, they can often be scanned by your forensics datapad and uploaded to the systems database. You can retrieve this data and use the system to match any fingerprints found at a scene to those who own them. When you get names back, you can compare these names to those returned from other evidence testing to start to make connections with who was at the scene, in which these citizens can be brought in for questioning. When on the scene of a crime, switch to your forensics scanner and scan surfaces for fingerprints. The datapad will automatically upload them for you as it scans. You can also scan a person's fingers on the screen. This is useful for gathering the fingerprints from witnesses and bodies.
When testing evidence, put on your forensics lab coat and put on your sterile latex gloves instead of your usual gloves. Test each bit of evidence one at a time and have patience. Thanks to the technology we have available, testing evidence is much easier than you're probably expecting. This guide will go over the technique for testing the different types of evidence you'll be expected to deal with at the entry level of the forensics team.
Blood Evidence
When testing blood evidence, avoid allowing it to come in contact with anything other than sterile forensics testing tools and equipment. If you have a liquid blood sample you're testing, you can simply place it in an analyzer, which will break down the sample and present the blood type, sugar levels, and contents (% of plasma, water, platelets, etc.), and the DNA analysis for you. From here, you'll have to match the blood type with the victim. This relies on DNA, which the analyzer will take care of for you. If you don't have a liquid blood sample to work with, specialized DNA testing will need to be done by an experienced member of the team. If the victim was infected by some sort of virus, you can take a slide and place a droplet of the blood on it and examine it under a microscope. Examining the types of cells you see will allow you to determine if any viruses are present in the blood stream of the victim, assuming they're blood-born pathogens.
Tissue Samples
When testing tissue samples, you want to first make sure the tissue is cell-rich, which will yield the best results. If not, retrieve other tissue from the body after its recovered from the scene. You should take this tissue from within the body, such as from the liver or muscle. These tests are important to show the age of the body in terms of how long it has been dead. If the tissue is still pliable, the body is less than three hours old. If it is rigid and stiff, rigormortis has set in, which will be obvious from how stiff the body will be. Rigormortis begins to set in after three hours of being deceased, and will reach peak stiffness around twelve hours and relax again after seventy-two hours. Use this as a guideline to determine how long a body has been dead, as well as the conditions its in. Tissue samples will also show if the body has been laying in water, or in extremely hot conditions, or extremely cold conditions. Tissue samples tell you about the environment the body has been exposed to. Using an analyzer on the tissue samples can often narrow down the conditions for you by showing if the body has been submerged and the tissue has absorbed water, or other things of that nature.
Fingerprint Examination
This is one of the easiest things to test, since it relies heavily on Universal Union technology given to us, which makes our job much easier. When gathering fingerprints from the scene, they can often be scanned by your forensics datapad and uploaded to the systems database. You can retrieve this data and use the system to match any fingerprints found at a scene to those who own them. When you get names back, you can compare these names to those returned from other evidence testing to start to make connections with who was at the scene, in which these citizens can be brought in for questioning. When on the scene of a crime, switch to your forensics scanner and scan surfaces for fingerprints. The datapad will automatically upload them for you as it scans. You can also scan a person's fingers on the screen. This is useful for gathering the fingerprints from witnesses and bodies.
Forensic Equipment Orientation (Airborne1st)
This chapter will go over all of the tools at your disposal and what they are used for, as well as how to use them.
Forensic Datapad- As a member of the NOVA forensics team, your datapad will be upgraded with advanced technology you can use to scan for evidence at crime scenes. The different modes you have available are fingerprint scanning mode, body fluid scanning mode, infrared scanning mode, and heat signature scanning modes available in white-hot and black-hot scanning modes for your preference. These can be accessed the "Forensics" menu on the home screen of the datapad.
Evidence Bags- You will be carrying around 8-10 clear bags with evidence tags on them for you to use for bagging evidence. They come in many different sizes to accommodate different sized physical evidence. You gather the evidence in the bag, seal it, and "Tag it", or name it and put a date on it.
U.U. Certified Black-light- In some situations, your scanner won't pick up certain liquid evidence, especially if great lengths have been taken to clean it up. This is where your black-light comes in. This is a small, handheld light with a tubular light on it powered by batteries. It is used to show liquids, even if they don't appear visible to the naked eye, or the scanner in your datapad. It requires the area to be dark to use, however.
Liquid Evidence Vials- You will be given extra vials to hold blood samples and any other liquid samples necessary to be taken as evidence. They're attached to the syringe used to draw the liquid from the source. The liquid then flows into the vial and is seal-able with the cap provided.
[//More will be added to the equipment list as time goes on.]
Forensic Datapad- As a member of the NOVA forensics team, your datapad will be upgraded with advanced technology you can use to scan for evidence at crime scenes. The different modes you have available are fingerprint scanning mode, body fluid scanning mode, infrared scanning mode, and heat signature scanning modes available in white-hot and black-hot scanning modes for your preference. These can be accessed the "Forensics" menu on the home screen of the datapad.
Evidence Bags- You will be carrying around 8-10 clear bags with evidence tags on them for you to use for bagging evidence. They come in many different sizes to accommodate different sized physical evidence. You gather the evidence in the bag, seal it, and "Tag it", or name it and put a date on it.
U.U. Certified Black-light- In some situations, your scanner won't pick up certain liquid evidence, especially if great lengths have been taken to clean it up. This is where your black-light comes in. This is a small, handheld light with a tubular light on it powered by batteries. It is used to show liquids, even if they don't appear visible to the naked eye, or the scanner in your datapad. It requires the area to be dark to use, however.
Liquid Evidence Vials- You will be given extra vials to hold blood samples and any other liquid samples necessary to be taken as evidence. They're attached to the syringe used to draw the liquid from the source. The liquid then flows into the vial and is seal-able with the cap provided.
[//More will be added to the equipment list as time goes on.]
Advanced Forensics (Airborne1st)
If you've made it this far in the training guide, you're making your way through the ranks of the forensics team. This chapter will cover the more advanced and specifics you'll need to know as a senior member of the NOVA Forenics team. This part of the training guide will cover more advanced evidence gathering techniques, more advanced and specific methods of testing evidence, and an introduction to DNA study.