The police are usually the first to attend the crime scene. The first officers to attend the crime scene have three initial key actions. These are to preserve life, to preserve the crime scene and to secure evidence. These are very important responsibilities. To preserve life, they would firstly call an ambulance for anyone who needed one at the crime scene, this is the most important action and should always be done first. Then they must preserve the crime scene by securing the crime scene with tape and producing a cordon, by doing this they are then also securing evidence in the crime scene and stopping it from being contaminated.
If the crime is a major incident, the police have the responsibility to contact the SOCOs (scene of crime officers) and ask them to come to the crime scene immediately.
If the crime scene is a major incident, SOCOs have the responsibility to get to the crime scene immediately. The first SOCO at the scene also has to follow the three initial key actions as the first officer does. These are to preserve life, to preserve the crime scene and to secure evidence. The SOCO will be able to follow these actions with more specialised knowledge than the officer.
The SOCOs are relied on to correctly gather all of the evidence needed from the crime scene without any contamination. To make sure the evidence is not contaminated after gathering it, the SOCOs will need to make sure that they wear all the correct PPE before gathering any evidence and they also need to make sure that they package all the evidence correctly. In this team there are different roles such as a photographer who will need to take pictures of the scene and the evidence for future reference. It is a very important responsibility of the photographer to make sure that they have photographed the crime scene before it is interfered with.
A detectives responsibility is to gather all of the facts about the investigation. They conduct interviews with suspects, victims, family, friends, anyone they think is involved in the crime or could help give information about the crime. They search for new information to help them create a lead in the investigation. The detective is in charge of the case and will follow the case through until the case is solved.
Forensic scientists examine evidence found at the crime scene, there are different types of forensic scientists. These have the responsibility to make sure all the evidence found is examined correctly, if the forensic scientists do not examine the evidence correctly this could stop very important information being found out.
Different types of crimes would mean different roles and responsibilities. For forensic scientists, the responsibilities they have depends on what crime is committed. For example, if the crime is a burglary they would need to search for fingerprints, hairs etc. If the crime is a murder, they would be searching for blood. If the crime was a rape they would have to take swabs and analyse any bodily fluids found.
