While the public enjoys criminal investigative shows like "CSI," students of Kimberly Tretton's forensic class at Douglas High School are learning how a crime scene is investigated in real life.
"Juries want the fancy, sexy stuff they see on TV, but in reality it takes months to match a fingerprint, not an hour," said Rick Brown, a detective for the Department of Public Safety who helped students investigate mock crime scenes Wednesday. "We're educating the students in reality."
Three classrooms were appropriated for the project, each set up like the scene of a sexual assault crime. Tretton's 21 students, all junior and seniors who've taken chemistry, were split into teams and assigned roles.
"We have a media representative, a scribe, a photographer, a team leader and evidence collector," said Tretton. "One of the students donated hair to the project so we can analyze hair and fibers. They're also analyzing blood spatter, and they'll learn to analyze DNA later this year."
Tretton has taught the science elective for two years and hopes to expand the class next year.
"I have to thank Lyn Gorrindo at the district," said Tretton. "She started this program, and she has done so much for us."
Tretton said the mock crimes scenes would account for 10 percent of her students' final grades.
"It's the practical part of the final," she said. "I'll be looking at how they collected and processed evidence."
In classroom No. 220, sheets stained with simulated blood were spread across a table. Articles of clothing lay disheveled on the floor providing evidence of a struggle. Douglas High School junior Sean Klena and senior Tyler Mitchell used a tape measure to find distances between the objects so they could sketch the crime scene and recreate it if they had to. Team leader Lindsay McKay interviewed witnesses and established their whereabouts at the time of the assault. Media representative Bianca Palacios made sure no unauthorized personnel entered the crime scene.
"I got interested in this stuff watching television," said Palacios. "I thought maybe I could be a CSI some day, and this is a great opportunity, although I knew from the beginning that reality would be different."
Wes Francis, another detective from the Department of Public Safety, said he hoped Tretton's class would inspire students to pursue careers in criminal investigation.
"They really need personnel in rural places like Mineral County," he said.
Tretton said that later in the week students would hopefully solve the case by matching specimens with certain suspects.
"It's so good to get people interested in what we do," Brown said. "They see this other side of it where cops aren't these big mean guys."
