Jennalele Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Imagine this; You're the forensic tech, arriving about an hour late to your shift. The Head of Security tells you that there's evidence that needs to be processed for the past two or three cases you missed. You get set up, paste your paperwork format and copy it a few times for templates, and think it's going to be a breeze. Oh, how terribly wrong you were. You are welcomed to evidence storage with three unmarked lockers in a cramped, dark room. You open the first one, expecting the items for the first case to be neatly stuffed inside, awaiting your analysis. Nothing. You open the second locker, hoping to god that your hunch isn't correct. Nothing. You open the third locker. Ten miscellaneous items and objects from various cases and sources spill out of the locker towards you as dread fills your chest. This is going to be a nightmare. After a tedious half hour battle with the rest of security to find out what came from where and what case each item pertains to, if you were lucky enough to get them all, you now have the even worse predicament of finding where to store all your evidence now, once complete. Frankly, there is no neat and organized location within your lab to place your many samples, fingerprint cards, and microscope slides given to you from your technological endeavors, and flushing them down disposals is just bad form. Alright.. Basically, what I propose is this. As the organization levels for forensic techs and evidence stuff sucks right now, I'm wondering what we could do to have a better way of organizing it. Allowing fingerprint cards to be attached to papers so they could be filed with their respective report into their folder and/or cabinet is one option, but I'm open to ideas. The big issue: There is no real concise and organized way of storing findings from the analyzers and microscopes in the lab. Your slides and samples have nowhere to go, and can't be filed with their result papers. This almost always results in the samples getting mixed up and/or left behind, while their papers get nearly filed away in their bins and folders. For some Forensic Techs that pride on their neatness, this is an absolute nightmare to try and deal with. The hand labeler only goes so far! The proposed solution: If it comes in the form of allowing the samples to be stapled or attached to their papers, having an organized place to store them, or perhaps a different idea below, I don't mind. But organization is always awesome and appreciated. Link to comment
K0NFL1QT Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Frankly, there is no neat and organized location within your lab to place your many samples, fingerprint cards, and microscope slides given to you from your technological endeavors, and flushing them down disposals is just bad form. The big issue: There is no real concise and organized way of storing findings from the analyzers and microscopes in the lab. Your slides and samples have nowhere to go, and can't be filed with their result papers. This almost always results in the samples getting mixed up and/or left behind, while their papers get nearly filed away in their bins and folders. For some Forensic Techs that pride on their neatness, this is an absolute nightmare to try and deal with. The hand labeler only goes so far! +1 Forensic Technician is a really cool job that's supremely let down by the workspace allotted. I played F-Tech a few times and I admit to enjoying it. I really like how the old Detective Analyser was tossed to allow investigations to be split into two separate, viable jobs. That said, it's such a hassle to get sorted and stay atop the workload. The lab takes like fifteen minutes to set up even at the start of the shift. I take every available box and empty the contents into an individual pile, with a swab box and a slide box placed in that north-west corner by the analysis machine to store relevant samples. Used swabs go in their box and slides go in theirs. At first I struggled with the shortage of slides, before I realized you can remove samples from them and allow that slide to be re-used. For any investigations under way I try and pile all the evidence together onto one tile on the table, but that gets messy if there's murder weapons involved too. During the course of an F-Techs shift you will take a lot of samples and take a lot of fingerprint cards, and only a few of them will provide results. This gives you a lot of non-recyclable samples and cards of no-use, with no way of disposing of them and frankly inadequate storage area to place them without dedicating one of your private evidence lockers to useless crap. A swab-incinerator would be amazing and fingerprint cards need to be treated as paper, or something, so they can go into folders or into the drawer. The evidence storage could do with being a little bigger with a few more lockers. Put a noticeboard in there so people can pin paper to it that will inform officers and investigators which locker is relevant to what case. Link to comment
ForgottenTraveller Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Space is a difficulty. I have tried using boxes but alas they can only hold cards not fibre samples. A quick way to simplify this down from a few simple things and possibly one new item. 1st Fingerprint cards, they are smaller than a paper sheet and a little more ridged. Let them be put in folders like paper, photos and bundles. That way you can have them labelled in one place/ 2nd Downscale fibre result bags to be small enough to be a small/tiny item, they are after all fibres in a tiny bag. That turns a big case of ten results into a box and a folder quite possibly with the folder in the box. Each of those containers taking up a cardboard unit. 3rdly the new item. Used by police today with evidence holding. The case box. Just an extra large cardboard box that can be labelled easily that can store up to normal size items that are in evidence bags, possibly craftable from two cardboard units. All it effectively is, is a resprited briefcase with a name option than can possibly be made with cardboard. With that, and case finds go into a case box, Fibres and prints into the same box inside fibres and a smaller box. Give the F Tech a small starting stack of cardboard and a case box inside each evidence locker to start, more cardboard can be ordered from cargo if needed. And boom. Easy organisation for the entire issue of items and evidence. And bonus with the pinboard that Konfl1qt mentioned. Link to comment
Rechkalov Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 +1 Even without inheriting unsolved cases from the previous CSI, with more crimes happening simultaneously, one can easily lose track of all his evidence. This would be... great. Just great! Plus one for investigators fighting actual crime and not just the overwhelming chaos of their office! Link to comment
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