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NIVERSITY IMES
Nov. 2, 2015
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C A L I F O R N I A S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y, L O S A N G E L E S
Issue 210.6
2nd Annual Crime Scene Simulation takes place Crime scene simulations prepare Cal State LA students for the real world. Hannah Jacobsen Staff Reporter
A murder occurred in Room C-99 of the Applied Gerontology Institute. The female’s body was found face down on the couch, in an apartment covered in white powder, blood, and knocked-over furniture. This was the crime scene that criminal justice, criminalist, and journalism students faced on Wednesday, October 28th from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Cal State LA’s interdisciplinary crime scene simulation brought together students from three different disciplines. For both Dr. Donald Johnson’s criminalistics students learning to work in CSI, and Dr. Lisa Graziano’s criminal justice students learning to go into law enforcement, the crime scene simulation taught students to cooperate and communicate in the field. Journalism students learning from Dr. Suzanne Regan and the University Times Business and Advertising Manager, Jim Munson, were also brought in to understand the challenges of covering sensitive crime stories. Harkmore Lee, Director of the Center on Child Welfare, directed the simulation program. “Part of our goal is to break this concept that CSI shows develop: cases getting solved in 43 minutes,” Lee said. “Through this simulation, we show what it takes to solve a crime and prepare
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Crime scene simulation | Photo by Pablo De La Hoya
students for the real world by applying what they are learning in class.” Students were walked through the entire process of investigating the crime scene, questioning witnesses, and preparing a press release. Los Angeles Police Department homicide detectives Mitzi Roberts and Grace Thorington were present to assist and answer questions throughout the process. Both detectives believe that this simulation is a great opportunity for hands-on experience, career preparedness, an edge to the students’ resumes, and also to give them insight into the stresses and emotions of the homicide division. “The way that a lot of officers deal with this kind of stuff is to bottle it up and go home, and that’s harmful,” Roberts said. “I learned to disassociate myself from the scene and the body.
Later, learning more about the victim, it’s crushing, but we have to keep going and support each other.” Criminalist students were tasked with documenting and collecting evidence at the scene. Professor Johnson, who guided the criminalist students and explained their actions to the audience, acted as criminalist for the case that this simulation was based on twenty-five years ago. He used stories from his long history of working in the LAPD to lead students through their work. “Criminalists often work alone. We can be at the scene for ten hours, or even the whole day,” Johnson said. Though the criminalist students weren’t able to spend ten hours processing the simulation
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evidence, Professor Johnson was pleased with the activity.
information out of the increasingly annoyed “witnesses.”
“The wonderful thing here is that we can simulate the entire process,” Johnson said. “Other simulations don’t involve these diverse interactions, and we get to see here how this alters the scene and the dynamics.”
“The witness side of investigation is really difficult because you have to go around and piece together what is going on,” one journalism student said. “A lot of the time, you don’t have much information and people aren’t willing to give it to you.”
While future criminalists processed the scene, criminal justice and journalism students were learning the difficulty of interviewing witnesses and preparing for a press release. The Applied Gerontology Institute’s hall was transformed into an apartment complex, with faculty and staff acting as apartment residents with assigned characters: the nosy neighbor, the suspicious guy who doesn’t trust the police, and a man who kept to himself and didn’t know much. The actors played their parts well as students rotated from door to door, trying to get
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At the end of four hours of hard investigative work, students were nowhere close to solving the case. It was a startling realization to see how time consuming and difficult it is to find culprits when presented with only a body and a room covered in blood and powder. However, many students left with a new appreciation for their field. The simulation will be hosting one more session of students in the next week before shutting down to prepare for the next session of crime-solving.
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