It would be instant gratification to be able to pull out a face obscured by shadows and say, “Hey, that’s little Aloysius Farnsworth MacGillacutty, that little slime-ball hangs out over on Rose and Spruce.
What if a street cop, investigator or crime scene investigator could run to the station or to their laptop in the car, plug a USB drive or CD into a department Windows PC based computer and evaluate video evidence to see if it’s viable for enhancement and even enhance the video right on the spot? Now, that’s what you’d call a real investigative tool. Don’t get me wrong it’s still valuable to the case, as defense attorneys really hate to see their buck-toothed, mouth-breathing client’s smiling face as he shoves a cheap chrome revolver in the store clerk’s face and announces, “give me the money.” Street cops and detectives need to use that video evidence to make a quick arrest, get the cretin off the street and protect the public from the danger these people pose. This is one area which can make or break your case in the first 24 hours and is one of the greatest investigative tools we have, but unless you can get it right away, it has less worth to the investigator. Video capabilities are of special concern to street cops and investigators. Or they’ll think it’s a weak case, and the miscreant at the defense table is innocent and simply being railroaded. It’s that or the prosecutor runs the risk of having the jury think we’re hiding something from them.
Now everyone not smart enough to avoid jury duty, and who gets seated on a case, fully expects 8×10 glossy photos taken of the crime (while in progress) and full Technicolor Cinemascope movies of the bad guys, placing them at the scene. But, even they admit, there’s not a single lab in the country with all these capabilities under one roof - not even at the FBI’s Super Lab outside of DC. I’m told everything we see on CSI is real. Three key strokes and enter later, the plate appears on the car from the video - taken at night, in a rain storm from 2 miles away, yet it appears as if it was taken just 2′ away, with a 60 megapixel $45,000 Hasselblad H4d digital camera.
“Can you enhance the license plate,” they ask. When it comes to video evidence, the result is even faster, the Field Evidence Tech hands the video technician a USB drive, they plug it into a computer the size of a 3-car garage and everything is immediately projected around the room on seven different monitors. They get the results right after the next Depends commercial. In about 6 months a note would appear in your in-box with the result. There was a box in the elevator lobby where you put the evidence collection tube with the case number and the processing you required. Have you ever watched any of the CSI series? Every time they have a case, one of the main characters will walk into the sparkling and pristine glass enclosed laboratory cubical of a minor character, hand them an evidence collection tube and say, “we need this right away.” If you had ever walked into my agency’s lab, you wouldn’t find a glass enclosed cubical.