LIsa Black
Cape Coral, FL
Female, 49
I spent the five happiest years of my life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now I'm a certified latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida. I also write a series of forensic suspense novels, turning the day job into fiction. My books have been translated into six languages.
School project?
All our jobs vary wildly, so what's easy and hard for me might be completely different for, say, a toxicologist or medicolegal death investigator. For me I would say the easiest is working with fingerprints in the office. It's tedious and time consuming, but not hard. The hardest part is testifying in court, which is inconvenient, nerve-wracking and often insulting on a number of levels.
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I'm sorry, I haven't had any experience with that.
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I couldn't tell you the exact chemistry, but it reacts with the iron present in hemoglobin to indicate blood. However it also reacts with other oxidizing agents such as copper and horseradish. Unlike what you see on TV, we don't spray luminol and then use a UV light or some such thing. We make the room as dark as possible, spending a lot of time taping material over windows and door cracks and 'ready' lights, then spray the luminol.or Bluestar. It will glow on its own without any additional equipment, and won't last long. It can be photographed but that's a bit of work. It won't stain or harm anything.
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That's hard to say because I only know what goes on at my particular agency, and cases are solved in all different ways--by fingerprints, by pawning stolen goods, by eyewitness testimony, through the criminal's use of electronic devices. I think more cases are solved today because there have been advances in all areas, because the world has gotten a little smaller and because the general public is more aware of criminal activity.
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Investment Banker
What's a 100-hour work week like?
Hotel Front Desk Agent
Have you ever had a suicide occur in one of your rooms?
Zookeeper and Animal Trainer
Why are some people so protective of endangered species?
As I said above, patience, attention to detail, a tolerance for the more tedious parts of the job, and an affinity for science. A strong stomach helps but I knew guys who were homicide detectives for twenty years and still got queasy at the smell of a dead body, so don't let that stop you.
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Just as a guess, it seems to me that molecular biology and sociology are pretty far apart, career-wise. With molecular biology I would expect you to go into DNA or some other kind of specialized analysis--which would be fabulous, but I doubt that you would also be doing crime scenes. My question is, would you like to work mostly in a lab or mostly at crime scenes? If mostly in a lab, then I think you are on the right track. The best way to know is to contact places you would like to work and ask them what their requirements are. Go for a tour if you can. This is also a great way to network and meet people. But most importantly, every agency will have different preferences based on their functions and positions. Best of luck!!
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No, because simply from a news article you have no idea of everything that is going on. The officers might not be (should not be) telling reporters everything they know, in order to weed out truthful and untruthful witnesses. They're also not going to tell reporters (and if they did the reporters wouldn't write it) every last little boring tedious detail of everything they do. And information often gets garbled in translation, from crime scene to cops, from cops to the information officer, from the info officer to the press release, from the press release to the news article, from the neighbor looking over their fence and then talking to the reporter. That's just human.
Lots of time the story I get from Dispatch when they first call me turns out to be a totally different thing when I get there.
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