IT AIN'T LIKE CSI

“After sitting on that murder trial jury panel this summer, it is amazing that there are not more murders. Sadly enough our police force didn’t really care since it was one crack head shooting another and HPD did a very poor job investigating the crime scene to the point that we had to let a guilty man walk free. We found out later he had killed 7 people prior to the one he was on trial for. The police just looked at it as one less crack head on the street. Those people know that there is very little chance that they will get caught or serve time for murder. Chances are greater that they will get busted for dealing, prostitution or possession. So sad.”

A friend of mine who is actively engaged in trying to get Houston’s police to adopt the crime-fighting CompStat program received the above message from a lady who is obviously upset about HPD’s crime scene investigations.
What she perceived as a non-caring poor effort may have resulted from the fact that most people get their ideas of how the police investigate crimes from the CSI shows and other crime shows on television. Here is how I answered the lady’s comments:

I read your comments about when you were on a murder jury and found the defendant innocent because of what you and your fellow jurors considered a poor crime scene investigation.

As a former police investigator and retired professor of criminal justice, I feel that your accusation that HPD investigators don't care about investigating a crime between crackheads is an unfair one.

Crime scene investigations are simply not as cut and dried as those you see on TV in the CSI shows and other crime shows. And much of the equipment they show on TV is pure science fiction. I can assure you from my experience that crime scenes can be very complicated and difficult to process. At times in the end, what evidence we were able to gather did not help much in solving a crime. At other times evidence gathered led us straight to the perpetrator. Not finding enough evidence at the scene does not mean the investigators did not care.

I'm sorry your jury had to let some scumbag off who had killed seven victims before, but to condemn HPD for that is a bit farfetched.