15 June 2010

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Science makes catching bad guys easy

 

“Just give us some DNA — we’ll figure out the rest.” On TV, science, not cops, solves the crime!

“Just give us some DNA — we’ll figure out the rest.” On TV, science, not cops, solves the crime!

By Chester Pach

This essay is excerpted from Pop Culture versus Real America, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs.  A profile of a real police chief appears here.

Police officers call them “the geek squad,” but the forensic experts in the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau are the heroes on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. They crack the toughest criminal cases by using microscopes or computers to evaluate each fragment of evidence and carefully piece together the clues. Viewers enjoy their high-tech gadgetry and quirky intelligence. Since its premiere in 2000, CSI has been a smash hit, often topping the television ratings. It’s so popular that it has led to the creation of two additional CSI programs, one set in New York, the other in Miami.

The CSI investigators concentrate on evidence, which, unlike witnesses, can never lie. No bit of evidence from a crime scene is too small to ignore. In one case, a toenail clipping proved that someone who claimed that he had killed a man in self-defense was guilty of murder. In another, dirt stains and carpet fibers implicated the killer. Gathering the evidence and interpreting the clues can lead the investigators on a fascinating journey of discovery. In an episode called “Rashomama,” a reference to the famous Japanese movie, Rashomon, about multiple perspectives on the same event, each member of the forensics team recounts his or her investigation of the murder of the mother of the groom at his wedding. Each story takes the CSI team one step closer to the identity of the killers—they turned out to be two bridesmaids.

In CSI the police almost seem irrelevant. They have little to do other than arrest the suspects that the forensics experts implicate. The show leaves the impression that analysis of DNA samples and hair follicles, rather than the testimony of witnesses, solves every crime and that the most important police work occurs in the laboratory or the morgue. Sometimes, though, even the smartest “geeks” and the most sophisticated science can’t solve the crime — in real life, if not on television. In those cases, only a police officer can add up the clues and catch the culprit.

Chester Pach teaches history at Ohio University, where he holds the title of Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member. He is the author of three books on U.S. politics and foreign policy. His next book, which will soon be published by the University Press of Kansas, is The Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)