Running head: CSI VS POLICE OFFICERS
Crime Scene Investigation vs. Real Police Officers
Ola Petty
SJVC Online
ENG 122 D1
Mr. Andrews
6-6-2013
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Running head: CSI VS POLICE OFFICERS
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In this comparison and contract I am going over Topic 4 Crime Scene Investigation (CSI)
versus real-world Police Officers. I will be explaining the difference of how both departments
works, solves crimes, and how they use special equipment to solve a case. The purpose of this is
to tell you how the CSI agents and police officers get the bad guys. There are well trained
female and male officers and agents that will protect us. They drive around in special vehicle that
would catch any one attention. I also think that the public should be glad to have special agents
and officers that work in the same community. The equipment that they use is very quality stuff
for them to come up with the evidence to solve a case.
What I see on television about the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), is very difference
from the real world police officers. They really get the job done. They collect all kinds of DNA,
detail about the surrounding area of which the incident happen. When you have the CSI unit
around they really goes to work to apprehend the bad guys, police officers do to, but in a
different way. They get the job done by collecting samples, and DNA form difference type of
sources. And when they get their samples they go right ahead and send them to the lab.
According to the article “How Crime Scene Investigation Works” by Julia Layton “a crime
scene, it is a long, tedious process that involves purposeful documentation of the conditions at
the scene and the collection of any physical evidence that could possibly illuminate what
happened and point that did it. They collect the dried up blood off the window shields and also
brush the glass off to get finger prints, and they will get hair off your clothes by using tweezers
and won’t even touch the white residue that are on your clothes, which may be cocaine. If there
are fouled smells or something, they would break the walls down to see where the smell is
coming from” (Layton, 2013). Police officers usually are the first one on the scene. They would
have to clear out the peoples on the scene, so that the evidence won’t get destroyed. The CSI
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agents will get the evidence, they sometime will have the district attorney present in case of if
they need a search warrant. If the victim or victims are dead, they would need an expert there to
pronounce that the victim is dead, and report the time of death. The CSI lab will process all of
the evidence that was collected from the scene of the crime. The lab work is different from the
field work. By them having all the evidence that was collected from several of crime scene, some
work may overlap on them and cause them to get behind in some work. They use some special
equipment to do their job. More importantly they have to be very patience and work to the best
of their ability to get the job done (Layton, 2013). Working as a police officer can be a stressful
job. They have to talk to all the people that were around when the accident happen, they also
write down notes, and will call the ambulance for natural causes. If they need more assistance
from other officers they would call them on the car CB radio. Some of the officer’s duties are to
provide a safe environment for the peoples. Some of them would be driving in the police cars as
well as riding a bicycle, and then in some cases they even would ride a horse (Woolley, 2013).
As for being a police officer you have to give them their respect of being a police officer. When
an accident is going on or a shooting incident, if you are driving in front of a police car and they
get a call and put their lights on you suppose to move over and let them by. They are different
from CSI, because they do not have the qualification like the members on the CSI team does.
And both of the team is good peoples to have around. The difference between the both of them is
that a detective and a CSI member are often thought of as one profession.
According to the article Criminal Justice Degree, College, and Career Blog (Gadek,
2013), the mainstream media, television, and movies often portray a crime scene, when a
detective takes a pen out of his pocket and starts poking around the body. The truth is that most
detectives and first respondents know very well not to contaminate the crime scene by poking
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their noses around (Gadek, 2013). I think that by having a CSI unit and police officers we would
feel much better and safer in our community, because there is a lot of stuff going on and we all
need the protection of both team. When there is security around us we feel that we can be safe
and live better in life than to look over our shoulder everywhere we go. Homicide detectives and
crime scene investigators are two different professions, and they form two different departments
also.
The detectives will check around the body to see whether he or she is dead, when the CSI
agents leave. When becoming a detective you have special qualification to go by. Some of them
are trained to do murder cases, and one reason for them to check fingerprints is to make sure that
they have the right perpetrator. What if a lead detective had the responsibility of processing a
crime scene, he would have to the check the crime scene out to make sure that the damage where
done by one or two peoples. As the time ticks away so do the leads that can result in an arrest, or
no arrest, of the perpetrator. In an event of a mistake an invested investigator can unintentionally
or intentionally manipulate the evidence and tests, thus squashing any chance of the case
legitimately going to trail. (Gadek, 2013)
When you are around a scene where an homicide has occurred you may see a number of
special agents that are taking pictures, and numbering shells that were shot from the gun, and
gathering up evidence to solve the case, meanwhile the officers are making sure that the public is
not in the way, and asking question to see where there any witness around when the homicide
happen. I really think that I can work as a CSI agent instead of being a police officer, because
they agents get to do the good work.
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Running head: CSI VS POLICE OFFICERS
References
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Gadek, R. (2013 Detective and a Crime Scene Investigator (CSI). Retrieved from
http://criminaljusticeonlineblog.com/01/difference-between-detective-and-crime-sceneinvestigator-csi/

Layton, J. (2013). How stuff works. How Crime Scene Investigation Works. Retrieved
from http://www.howstuffworks.com/csi.htm

Woolley, E. (2012) Career Bear. What do police officers do? Retrieved from
http://careerbear.com/police-officer/article/what-do-police-officers-do
). Criminal Justice Degree, College, and Career Blog. Difference Between a
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