1. Which best describes the size of your agency in the number of sworn officers?
a. Less than 20. 14%
b. 21 to 50. 17%
c. 51 to 100. 21%
d. 100 to 500. 24%
e. More than 500. 24%
2. Which of the following best describes your experience level?
a. Less than 3 years. 7%
b. 3 to 5 years. 7%
c. 5 to 10 years. 17%
d. More than 10 years. 69%
3. Which of the following best describes your personal feelings about gathering evidence?
a. I hook and book. Evidence gathering is for someone who specializes in forensics. 2%
b. I generally don t gather a lot of evidence but will make the effort if the crime is pretty serious. 7%
c. I usually look for anything of evidentiary value and make an effort to gather it if I think it s worth it. 12%
d. I routinely look for evidence and closely examine a crime scene because I know evidence can make a difference. 62%
e. I go all out. Great cases can be made with a small amount of evidence. If time permits, I ll spend half a shift processing a scene. 17%
4. Which of the following best describes the reality of evidence processing at your agency?
a. Only the most serious crimes have any type of evidentiary effort made and even those often don t get quality work. 7%
b. When a serious crime occurs, we pull out all the stops to gather evidence but that s pretty much it. Most cases are just documented with paper and the officer moves on. 7%
c. Our agency is probably in the middle, we really work to gather evidence on the serious crimes and some officers (or specialists) will gather evidence at mid-level incidents. It s a little bit hit and miss depending on who gets the call and who s available. 45%
d. Our department does a good job with evidence. We have trained personnel who gather evidence at almost all felony crimes and the evidence gets processed effectively, often resulting in identifying and/or convicting a suspect. 26%
e. This is something our agency does extremely well. Even fairly minor crimes get the full evidence gathering effort. We know that serious crooks sometimes commit minor crimes and let their guard down. This gives us a chance to catch them, and we do. 14%
5. Which of the following best describes the cases where DNA is gathered by your agency?
a. Homicides and rapes. 21%
b. Above plus other violent crime cases. 29%
c. Above plus some serious property crimes. 21%
d. Above plus less serious property crimes. 17%
e. I m not sure my agency can even spell DNA. 12%
6. Which of the following best describes your experience/understanding of the CSI factor in your area?
a. Juries pretty much expect every case to have some great physical evidence. Even on simple cases with eye witness testimony, defense attorneys will try to make an issue of why evidence wasn t gathered. The district attorney will often kick a case back asking for physical evidence. 40%
b. Juries seem to be fairly reasonable about evidence. I think they understand that TV is not reality and that resources are limited. I don t think it has been much of a factor. 52%
c. In my area, juries pretty much accept what the officer and the district attorney says. If the officer testifies to the offense, a jury will usually come back with a conviction. Physical evidence really doesn t seem to be much of a factor in cases. 7%
Here s a comment a reader shared in response to the poll.
I spent 20 years in a large urban department, and now that I'm in a small department in a good-ol'-boy county, I believe I've actually gone backwards in time and am living in the 1950s. Somebody save me!
