15.1: Introduction

‘It was your average mid-Western strip mall built in the mid-1960s with a laundromat anchored on one end and a dry cleaner on the other. In between was the usual mix of a liquor store, an insurance salesman of some variety, a nail salon with a dubious history and character, and that one store with the darkened windows and vague signage that no one really knew what product they sold or service they provided. Where once a matching convenience store had been built on a corner of the property near the driveway, an Italian pizzeria now stood; a square building, brightly colored, proudly flying Italian flags, and isolated from the grey and silver, glass and concrete, rectangular shape of leased shops that faced the restaurant with scorn and contempt. Instead, the pizzeria rose from the asphalt, like the Pinta or Santa Maria on a vast ocean as they neared the landfall of a new and strange world, as a wonderous yet dreadful vision to the local natives, stalwart in their loathing of new things. The unmistakable smell of garlic, tomato sauce, and freshly baked pizza dough annoyed the senses of the insurance salesman, who, regardless of his perturbance, was a regular customer, a secret kept from the dry cleaner…’

Perhaps not the beginning of the greatest novel ever written, but your author will bet the creative composition of the story held your attention and intrigued your imagination. The words have been arranged with narrative elements like shapes, colors, senses, tone, and even emotions to draw the imagination of the reader into the story. In doing so, however, your author has done something else: he has also introduced bias, division, and opinion. Whose side of the story are you on? Are you on the side of the stalwart but boring strip mall clan or the daring new pizzeria clan?

Remember the rules concerning the admissibility of evidence in court and how the evidence cannot play on the emotions of the attorneys, judge, or jury. The same is true for written evidence, such as a police or forensic report. Your author likes to refer to this form of writing as being clinical in nature where the emotions have been removed. Let us now look at the same strip mall through the words of the forensic technician who is setting the scene.

‘The property consisted of a rectangular-shaped strip mall constructed in the mid-1960’s using steel, concrete, and glass materials. The building had a south-west exposure, situated approximately 350’ north of the 200-block of Main Street, and bore the following addresses above the glass entrance door of each store: 205A, Mom’s Do-Your-Own Laundromat, 205B; FiFi’s Nail Emporium; 205C, Baker’s Insurance Agency; 205D, Fred’s Never Leave Them Dry Liquors; 205E, an unknown or vacant store; and 205F, Speedy’s Pretty-Quick Dry Cleaners. The strip mall encompassed an area approximately 150’ in length and 67’ in width. Angled parking stalls were noted directly in front of the walkways of the building and linear parking spaces were noted in the parking lot. 207 Main Street, Anthony’s “Just Like Momma Made” Pizzeria, was located in the south-west corner of the property, approximately 18’ north-east of Main Street, in proximity to the one driveway giving ingress and egress to the property.’

A report is a written statement providing a permanent record of your actions, observations, and discoveries. Nearly every official action you take, participate in, or observe will ultimately result in a written report. It is the documentation of what you did, what you saw, what you smelled, what you heard, and what was told to you by eyewitnesses. And yes, like it or not, punctuation, spelling and grammar are important. Notice that your author said that the report is a record of YOUR actions, observations, and discoveries. In this regard, reports generated using artificial intelligence may look great, but they are not a representation of your actions; nor could they ever. Your author can only imagine how an attorney for the defense would use that to their advantage before a jury when they discover you did not write your own report. Woe betides the forensic specialist who uses artificial intelligence to write a forensic report. Your author strongly believes using artificial intelligence to do your work for you is a clear indication that you have abandoned any hope of striving to be the very best at your profession. Furthermore, most internet-based artificial intelligence report writing “assistance” programs that are not subscription-based may be open-source platforms which would mean that the information being uploaded may no longer be confidential. Even subscription-based services may use the information you uploaded into their systems to improve their services; therefore, information you thought would be confidential may be integrated into the general knowledge of the artificial intelligence model and inadvertently incorporated into responses to other inquiries. This could create a tremendous problem, including litigation, for the law enforcement agency when this highly sensitive information has been revealed.

The forensic technician will generally be tasked with writing two types of reports: a narrative report or a forensic analytical report. A narrative report is generally a chronological accounting of the functions performed by the technician, starting at the point at which the writer becomes involved in the action. The narrative ends at the point where the writer’s action is completed. This form of writing will include the date and time of the action, along with an introduction of the writer, including their assignment and responsibilities, and the purpose for their role in the action. It will then contain a step-by-step accounting of what they did. A forensic analytical report is an official written document that is a record of the scientific examination of a crime scene, or the evidence from that scene, that documents how the evidence was analyzed, the scientific methodologies that were employed, the results of the analysis, and the opinion of the analyst to the conclusions discerned from the analysis. This type of report, and the testimony of the expert witness, serves to assist the “trier or fact” in a legal matter, whether it is the jury or a judge, in order to understand complex technical or scientific matters to help them form an opinion on the guilt or innocence of a defendant. These reports should be highly detailed and objective as to how the conclusions were made.