Day 11: OSBI

Ok, so I've now decided that doing two days of blog is far easier than doing one a day. I can't actually believe it's been 11 days since I left England. The time has properly flown by!

My alarm sounded at 0715, way to early for my liking, but I guess it has to be done at some point, and after showering and getting dressed I was ready for the day.

Moving to our RV by 0800, it seems that I was the first of the C.T. guys to be ready, despite us needing to be there by 0830, not that that would matter. With Jonny wanting a shower, sods law reared its ugly head, as just as he was getting ready to shower, one of the guys who didn't need to be ready before us took a 20 minute long shower, saying just after he got in "I'll be out in a minute". Yeah right!

So what does Jonny do, takes a 500ml bottle of water, and splashes it over his head to wet it, and then proceeds to dry himself with a filthy towel. Ah well, if needs must!

With us all ready to go, we wander over to the place where we were told to go, the same place as yesterday, the OSBI Forensics Lab. When we got there, it turns out that we're not actually meant to be there, but at the OSBI headquarters some 5 miles away, somewhere along the line, we'd been given the wrong information. After a frenzied call and a lift, we eventually arrived at where we were meant to be, around an hour after we should've started. Not bad considering the events that had led to this.

Having been checked in and everything, we were led upstairs into the classroom where we were introduced to the director of the OSBI DeWade Langley, who gave us a brief introduction to the OSBI and what it did, before handing us over to the next few speakers. I have to say, everything which they said to us was incredibly interesting.

Next we had maybe the most incredible guy in the world... ever. A guy named Harvey Pratt. Ok, so his name doesn't sound too convincing, however, the stuff that he does is incredible. However, you know when you're an awesomely fantastic person, when you have your own page on wikipedia, and this guy does! He's apparently the worlds most accomplished and worlds best forensic artist. This means that in the event that a suspect is unknown, he'll be called in to draw an impression of what the suspect looks like through descriptions given by witnesses. Some of the likenesses that he showed us was amazing when he showed us photos of the perpetrator after arrest. As well as that sort of stuff, he's also been employed to do things such as stuff like ageing, so that they can get a fair representation of what a fugitive on the run would look like after a period of time, as well as what a kidnapp victim could look like after a period of so many years. On top of this, he also does skull reconstructions, if they find human remains that are so badly deformed that the face cant be used for identification. Real interesting stuff!

The next guy we had ran us through the procedures for Polygraphing. The art of lie detecting. Apparently, although they are allowed to do it to retrieve fairly accurate results, the results are not allowed to be given in evidence in court, despite a 98% degree of accuracy. What was said however was that the pre and post interviews can be used to testify for or against a suspect in the event that it could provide vital evidence for within the courts. Unfortunatley though, we didn't have the time to have a demonstration on one, which would've been awesome! I could forsee Jonny's turn being something like this:

Only joking Jonny, love you really!

Having gone for lunch at a local sandwich place, where I had a Santa Fe Chicken sandwichy thingy. We went back for 3 more talks. Firstly from a Crime Scene investigator. This was possibly the most interesting talk of the day, and definitely not one to have had before lunch. Some of the pictures she showed us, of murder victims, were horrific, and I must admit to feeling a tiny bit queasey when she showed us the maggot infested body. Despite it being so disgusting, her talk was quite possibly the most informative of the day, and for someone to have experienced so much mutilation and brutality in her job, she seemed not to show any form of stress or anything. I have new-found respect for that job, having had my opinions moulded by shows such as CSI, which does not depict the brutality involved.

The next talk saw all of us flagging, despite it being the only one that was properly linked to our course, about the evidence network that had been set up in the wake of 9/11. Sure the stuff would've been incredibly interesting, however with an 84 slide powerpoint to get through in 45 minutes, so much information was darn near impossible to digest so quickly. I believe we all found ourselves falling asleep at some point, mainly due to the heat and humidity, but also partly due to the monotony of the presentation.

The final presentation was probably the most poignant one of the day, on Child Protection. I have complete and utter respect for this guy. The stuff that he's had to see must be sickening, having to deal with countless cases of Child Pornography and in general, Child Abuse. It was interesting to note, that he was the only guy that openly swore whilst talking to us. But then again, it's par for the course there.

That more or less concluded the day's work, with us heading back to the campus to freshen up and get ready for the evening's activity. A western movie, that just so happened to be the most boring movie ever produced, named Cimarron. Apparently it was remade with John Wayne in it, now that would've been so much better. I mean, it's John Wayne for crying out loud!!! I kind of got the gist of it, the Americans come and take over some land and develop it into what was to become Oklahoma City... pretty simple, but really strung out.

Having sat through all 131 minutes of it, we all went off to McDonalds to get a bite to eat, with the guys going back to IHOP to get food whilst the rest of us went to get some cheap crap from McD's. On the way back, Jon decided to piss everyone off with some choice words, which in all fairness he didn't mean the way he said it, and I had immense fun pretending to tell him off, whilst he seemed to be getting more and more worked up, deciding to go for a run in penance.

Jonny telling a story (but with slightly more hair) ->

As it was Jonny, that of course did not go off without at least one story to tell, as he came back telling us how three distinct things had happened:

1. He'd fallen and twisted his ankle about 30 seconds into the run

2. He'd witnessed a drugs deal

3. He'd then had stuff thrown at him by those involved in the deal

3 things struck me about this:

1. If he had fallen that early, why didn't he turn back

2. Ok that could've happened

3. What the hell was thrown at him, surely in a state where it's legal to carry a concealed weapon, they'd have shot at him, and not thrown a stone... but who cares, it made a good story! Oh how it would've been great to have him linked up to a polygraph at that point!

Having said I was going to do two days, I shall leave today's post until tomorrow when I might be more awake to actually do two days!
Until then,

Tchuss

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