WEST JORDAN — A police officer enters a room where a crime may have occurred and finds blood, but no victim.
To the untrained eye, there appears to be very little information about who might have committed the crime or what kind of crime it might be, but a trained detective will be able to get a good idea of what weapon was used and even the size of the perpetrator they are looking for, all based on blood evidence left behind.
Recently, nearly two dozen officers from as far away as California attended a one-week course in West Jordan on blood spattering. The course was put on by the University of Tennessee's National Forensic Academy, also referred to by its more common pop-culture name, The Body Farm.
The Body Farm is a world-renowned training course for teaching law enforcers, investigators and others about how to better investigate crime scenes, particularly those involving dead bodies. The hands-on training has developed a high reputation for creating uncanny realistic scenarios for students.
A couple of years ago, a West Jordan crime scene analyst took one of the courses and returned with glowing reviews and a desire to have the academy brought to Utah to offer instruction.
West Jordan finally got the opportunity to have instructors from The Body Farm visit, and it opted for the course on blood-stain pattern analysis.
"It helps in a lot of ways. When we get to a scene trying to figure out what happened, we're not just going to (accept) somebody's story, even if it's as simple as a suicide. We have to see, does the evidence and blood spatter support the story," said West Jordan Police Sgt. Travis Rees, head of the department's major crimes division. "A blood pattern really helps with that. A good pattern will indicate the type of weapon, what type of trauma … it's all based on scientific principle."
The goal of the course was to help experienced detectives "better interpret what they are seeing," at a crime scene, said West Jordan Police Sgt. Drew Sanders.
Blood spatter is one of the most common types of evidence to find at a crime scene and allows detectives to get a quick analysis of what happened, he said.
But analyzing a crime scene isn't like a TV show that takes 60 minutes, Sanders said.
"These things take an awful long time to go over," he said.
The instruction course culminated Thursday at the old South Jordan Elementary, 1350 West 10400 South. Five different crime scene scenarios were set up, including a stabbing, shooting and beating. Pig blood was used to create the crime scenes.
"It was amazingly realistic, I thought," said Rees, who also had praise for the instructors. "It was real obvious they had in-the-field and teaching experience. They knew what to show us and how to present it."
"It was valuable in that (participants) got instant feedback from the experts," Sanders said. "This gives them a broader perspective in a way that they may or may not come across in the field."
e-mail: preavy@desnews.com