State Patrol’s Camera Measures Up Highly Accurate, ‘Amazing’ Device Re-Creates Crime Scenes, Helps Police Solve Mysteries
Police detectives move around crime scenes slowly, meticulously, searching for evidence: strands of hair, drops of blood, microscopic fibers from clothing.
At the same time, they’re thinking about distances and dimensions, but the last thing they want to fool with is a measuring tape. They leave that to the Washington State Patrol.
“Yeah, we do their measuring, but we’re not using yardsticks,” WSP Sgt. Jeff Sale said. “What we use is more accurate than you can ever imagine.”
A computer-camera on a tripod, the “total station” measuring device determines distances at crime scenes - accurate to a half-inch for every mile - and records them on a disc. Back at the WSP office, the disc is downloaded and a printer spits out the entire detailed scene in full color.
Bullet holes are marked. Hedges and shrubs are colored green, with their heights and widths noted. Beer bottles and cigarettes found at the scene are pinpointed. Cars and trucks are drawn to scale because the computer knows what thousands of makes and models look like.
Within seconds, detectives can tell exactly how far away a murder victim was from the killer. They can dispute or confirm an officer’s account of a shooting. They can find out whether a witness who said he saw it all is telling the truth.
“It’s amazing what this thing can do,” WSP detective Geoffrey Genther said as he zoomed in on a pair of skid marks on his computer screen. “We can do in hours what would have taken weeks in the old days.”
Although it has been around for nearly four years, the device just recently has become popular among police and sheriff’s departments throughout Eastern Washington. Once used only at fatal car accidents, word of the equipment’s versatility is spreading quickly.
Only five law enforcement agencies in the country have access to the equipment, which costs $35,000 and requires intensive training. It was requested nearly 100 times by detectives across Washington state last year.
Smaller police departments have grown especially fond of the unit, with some wanting it immediately after a murder or a shooting.
Pend Oreille County Undersheriff Dick Arend said a call to the WSP is one of the first his department makes after a major crime has been committed, as was the case in the murder of a homeowner who had interrupted a burglary at his house last week.
“We have 11 deputies to cover the entire county,” Arend said. “We don’t have the resources to take care of everything, but (WSP) will do it for us. I don’t even know the names of some of the (equipment) they use.”
Arend recalled three times in the past year when the WSP’s measuring unit probably saved county cases.
“Their work helps tremendously in court because they’re experts testifying on something they do every single day,” Arend said. “The drawings they come up with are amazing.”
Larger departments regularly ask for the WSP’s measuring device as well. Spokane police detectives have wanted it at nearly all of their most recent murder cases.
Lt. Jerry Oien said the unit saves detectives precious time in the hours after a killing and frees them up to identify the victim, establish a motive and hunt down suspects rather than jot down a bunch of lengths and widths.
“That task is just as important, but there are so many other things we have to do in the first 24 or 48 hours after a homicide that it just helps when (WSP) steps in,” Oien said. “We know it’ll be done right, too.”
Oien said that when the major crimes unit first used the WSP’s measuring device, he was surprised by its accuracy and the quality of the drawings.
“They were just perfect,” Oien said. “We used to have to stand out there with measuring tape and then hand-draw the scenes later or have someone do it for us. With this, everything is accurate and to scale.”
After the two latest incidents when a Spokane police officer shot and killed an armed citizen - one last summer and one last month - the WSP was there. Its measurements helped detectives justify the shootings, Oien said, and the drawings will be kept should the cases ever go to court.
“We’d like to have our own, that’s how much we like (the measuring device),” Oien said.
WSP’s Sgt. Sale said the unit was instrumental in reconstructing the complicated scene at Fairchild Air Force Base last summer when a crazed gunman killed four and injured 22 others, including several children.
Measuring the entire 15-acre scene took troopers two days. By hand, however, it would have taken weeks and been far from accurate, Sale said.
“It’s first-rate,” he said. “It’s very sophisticated.”
With WSP’s full-color map of the Fairchild scene, investigators were able to determine the exact path gunman Dean Mellberg took, where he reloaded his assault rifle and how far away he was from each of his victims.
When firearms experts debated how far away a military police officer could have been from Mellberg when he shot and killed the gunman, troopers whipped out their records.
They were 207 feet apart. Exactly. Sixty-nine yards. Three shots fired, two hits in the head.
“No one may believe it, but our machine doesn’t lie,” Sale said. “Once we take the measurements, we can’t change them. The computer won’t let us. They’re there forever.”
Because the device is growing in popularity, Sale said he’d like to have three full-time troopers hired solely for crime-scene response. But as things are now, the detectives who use the equipment must handle other cases and may not be available for every request, he said.
“The unit can do much more than we’ve even touched on,” Sale said, noting its capability to draw in 3-D, something troopers haven’t mastered yet. “I think we should make the most of it.”
xxxx High-tech camera What is its cost? $35,000. Who has it? Only five law enforcement agencies in the country, including the Washington State Patrol. When has it been used? Last week in the Pend Oreille County murder case and in the Dean Mellberg investigation at Fairchild.