Behind the badge: Bec Robinson, Major Crime Scene Unit

BEC ROBINSON

Rank: Leading Senior Constable

Age: 34

Graduated: 2004

Station: Major Crime Scene Unit

Why did you join Victoria Police?

This sounds ridiculous, but growing up my favourite TV show was CSI because I was always interested in the investigation of crime; death investigations in particular. So when I finished school I wanted to set about pursuing a career in that sort of field and I joined Victoria Police.

Tell us a bit about your career with Victoria Police.

I joined Victoria Police when I was 19 and did eight years in general duties at Footscray and Williamstown. After that, I was looking for a bit of a career change and had been looking into Crime Scene Services when I saw an email saying there were vacancies at the Major Crime Scene Unit.

I went along to the information session as it had always been an area of interest due to my CSI fascination.

After the information session I applied for a role and was lucky enough to get it and I’ve been here since.

Tell us about what you do in your role in the Major Crime Scene Unit.

We attend all the major crime and complex crime scenes, such as homicide, sex offences, sudden deaths and aggravated burglaries.

Once the crime scene is cordoned and contained, we are called upon and come in and process the scene.

Our role is to record the scene as accurately as possible in the form of video, hand-written notes, photographs and sketches that can be produced at court and during the investigation.

After we’ve recorded the scene, we collect items as exhibits we feel are relevant and could be used as evidence.

Is there a case you have worked on that stands out to you?

Due to the nature of the job we are always involved in quite high-profile cases, so there are a few I’ve worked on that stand out, such as the Jill Meagher case.

But more recently I was involved in a job where the deceased had been stored inside a wheelie bin for 17 years and was obviously severely decomposed.

However, the fingerprint experts were still able to obtain prints from the deceased, so that was quite interesting; I think that may have been a record for the office.

Is your job anything like what is depicted on CSI?

Not a great deal. In real life you specialise and stick to your area of expertise.

On those shows, the same people seem to follow an investigation the whole way through, from collecting the evidence, analysing it and then conducting the whole investigation.

But really the detectives investigate and follow up all the avenues of the investigation, whereas we are responsible for recording the scene and then collecting the evidence, which then goes off to the specialised teams for further analysis.