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CSI beginner book guaranteed to get you above your competition

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The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation

Of course, if you want to become a crime scene investigator, you can’t rely only on what you learn at college or at your crime scene investigator courses. The best form of education is, as always, self education, and this book will definitely help shape your knowledge of crime scenes, forensic analysis, and numerous other things you have to know.

It doesn’t require much knowledge in advance and it uses simple and clear explanations on all topics and it contains more than 300 entries discussing applications and techniques of crime scene investigation. Despite the fact that many entries lack the in-case depth that other publications or books show, the advantage is that you get a clear idea about many topics, and you are guaranteed to understand everything it says. Arranged A-Z, each entry is a concise description of the topic, and even though a big bibliography is included, the bad thing is there are no further read recommandations.

 

Author Michael Newton is a longtime Baltimore Police Department crime scene investigator and contributor to more than 200 texts in the area of crime and forensic analysis, so you get information straight from the source. All in all, if you want to know how to become a crime scene investigator, if you want to get a head start in front of the competition, or just find out more information about crime scenes and forensic analysis, the Encyclopedia of Crimes is definitely the book to read.

America shocked by Long Island serial killer

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A criminal profiler explained the way the Long Island murderer thinks and acts, who is wanted by the police, after crime scene investigators discovered at least eight bodies on a south-east New York beach.

Louis B. Schlesinger confutes the public opinion, which was that the killer is a brilliant mind, who manages to avoid being captured by the NYPD criminal investigators and crime scene investigators. Schlesinger says that the murderer in not motivated by rage, but by sexual deviations, he wants to manifest control over his victims.

“We are dealing with a sexually, motivated serial killer”. The profiler explained that the most difficult of the killer’s tasks is the abduction, that is why they prefer killing prostitutes, as they never refuse accompanying them.

One of the victims’ sister was contacted by the man – criminal investigators believe it might have been the criminal himself. The forensic psychologist says that this kind of behavior is not out of the ordinary.

“This kind of people are extremely sadistic. Making others suffer turns them on.”

The man that contacted the victim’s family was careful enough so that the call could not be traced by the techs, thus the general opinion is that the perpetrator is a cop or a person familiar with the procedure, or he could just be watching CSI. Schlesinger thinks that the numerous TV series about crime scene investigators and profilers made this knowledge available to anybody who watches TV or has an internet connection.

The Green River killer’s activity map

The most frequent way to catch this unsubs is for a victim to escape him alive and then identify him, but the major problem is that most of the time, for various reasons, the survivor doesn’t come forward with the info.
Another misconception the professor wants to address is about all the serial killers being very smart people, with high IQs, who doesn’t leave any forensic evidence behind and avoids  crime scene investigators at all time. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Serial killers have rather low IQs. For example, Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer, who was apprehended 30 years from his first murder, was considered a criminal genius by the general public, but turned out to have a below average IQ of 83.

 

Becoming a CSI – what you need to know before you start

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If you’re like me and millions of other people, you know about the CSI series – and watch at least one of them. Whether it’s CSI New York, CSI Miami, the original or whatever, they all have one thing in common: they show how cool crime scene investigators are. But being one is not all fun and games, actually it’s almost never games, and only sometimes fun. So if you want to become a crime scene investigator, are considering it, or are just interested in what their lives are really like, there are som things you need to know before you start.

First of all, if you’re in it for the spotlight, forget it; crime scene investigators are rarely in the center of attention, and they almost never get the attention they deserve. Just like starting med school to be like doctor House isn’t a good idea, taking up a crime scene investigator college to be like Gary Sinise isn’t going to take you very far; you have to like what you’re doing for the job itself, not for the kind of benefits you see on TV. It is expected that you have attended a quality or have a degree in biology for lab techs and are able to apply that knowledge to your field duties. Second of all, you not only have to be smart, but you also have to know a lot of things. If you’re below average, you can’t be a CSI. Period. But that’s one of the good things, because if you do get to work as a crime scene investigator, you are going to work in an environment filled with smart and interesting people. They may not necessarily be the most talkative bunch, they may not be the cool kids, but they’re the interesting kids; and they love to learn things ! Whether it’s biology, physics, psychology, etc, you are going to have to know a bit of everything. So if learning interesting stuff is your thing, that’s definitely a plus, and you can’t get away with just what you leran at college.

Another thing that most people tend to neglect is the cases and assignments you will get; the vast majority of the cases you will face as a crime scene investigator are mundane; that’s not to say that they are boring or not important – not at all. But finding a hacker serial killer or whatever you see on TV – that almost never happens. But you’ll find that even most cases that seem uninteresting at a first glance have a lot of charm, and are quite demanding. After all, you’ll be working with evidence and deducting all sort of things, so your mind will always be working at maximum capacity; one of the perks here is that crime scene investigators almost never suffer from brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s for example, because if you become a CSI, your brain is always going to be active. But that’s also demanding, so if you’re not good under pressure or stress, that’s going to be a problem, even though you can solve these things by practice and experience.


 The money is also not the best around; of course, you do qualified work, which means that you won’t have any problems paying the rent, but the car you’re gonna show up in for work – it’s not going to be a ferrari. The salary of a CSI varies between about 30.000-100.000$ / year, if you want more details about a crime scene investigator’s salary, check the post here.

If you want to be a criminalist and work in a crime laboratory (sounds awesome, doesn’t it?), you will need at least a four year degree in biology or chemistry for example, or in medicine. If you want to be a crime scene technician, you will probably need less formal education, but a few agencies will require you to be a sworn police officer first. However, most don’t. A crime scene technician analyses the crime scene for evidence: bodily fluids or DNA, takes pictures of the scene, interviews witnesses and helps police officers in a sum of things. Allin all, a CSI does a lot of things, aside from investigating the crime scene; forensic identification is his main goal, but he is also a psychologist, a biologist, a chemist, and sometimes even a cop. It’s important to understand that there are different types of crime sceme investigator: from a crime scene technician and medical examiner to a forensic analyst or even computer forensics. Hopefully, this has somewhat given you a clue about what a crime scene investigator does; of course, you can’t totally understand this from an article, but hopefully you can get that feel that you’re starting to know what it’s about.