Scene of Crime Officers (SOCO's)

Roles and Responsibilities of Scene of Crime Officers in Criminal Investigations 

Scenes of crime officers are individuals who attend crime scenes after a crime has been committed and look for, and correctly and securely collect evidence to be examined. Scenes of crime officers will attend crime scenes when requested by the lead investigator of a case. SOCO’s will be involved in the gathering and analysing facts stage of a criminal investigation, the facts they will gather are in the form pieces of evidence at the crime scene. Scenes of crime officers have many roles and responsibilities within criminal investigations, these include: Preventing contamination of evidence at a crime scene, scenes of crime officers do this by wearing personal protective equipment such as goggles, gloves and a full body protective suit, this is done to prevent the SOCO themselves from contaminating the evidence. They also do this by establishing a common approach pathway to establish a safe pathway into the scene that will allow access without evidence from being contaminated. Another role of a scene of crime officer is to identify evidence, on attendance at a crime scene the SOCO will scour the area for any potential evidence such as fingerprints, hairs or fibres or in a murder perhaps a murder weapon. The purpose of them identifying evidence is to enable them to build up a portfolio of evidence to potentially identify a suspect who committed the crime. After identifying evidence another role of a SOCO is to collect the evidence, it has to be ensured that they do this correctly, putting evidence in the correct bags to prevent the evidence from being contaminated or damaged. It also has to be collected using the correct method for example dusting and lifting fingerprints.

Role of SOCO’s in OJ Case  

In the OJ Simpson case the SOCO’s or criminalists as they are called in this case were Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola, these individuals were special investigation division criminalist, members of the public trained in the collection of evidence. The criminalists in this case were tasked with the collection and documentation of all the evidence at both the murder scene and at Simpson’s house, also they had to catalogue and sequence all of the evidence for transfer to the laboratory. Fung and Mazzola also assisted the coroner (Pathologist) in the examination of both Nicole and Ron’s bodies at the crime scene in order to identify and collect any evidence on their bodies. Both criminalists were criticized for the contamination of evidence as they failed to correctly bag evidence separately, in some cases putting different sample of blood evidence in the same collection bag.

Role of SOCO’s in other investigations

Scenes of crime officers will be involved in criminal investigations when requested to be by the lead investigators. In every type of investigation a scenes of crime officer attends their roles and responsibilities will be to identify and collect evidence relevant to the case. However the type of evidence a scenes of crime officer collects is the factor which differs depending on the type of criminal investigation. For example as part of an investigation into a murder the scenes of crime officer would collect any blood evidence or potential murder weapons. Whereas if working as a scenes of crime officer at a terrorist attack the evidence they collect will be linked to determining what occurred and who carried out the attack, so for example collecting components of a bomb.