Expert Witness
I asked Professor Greg Dagnan to comment on the process of interviewing witnesses at a crime scene: “The responding officer should have identified any witnesses and separated them from everyone else. Nothing makes a detective madder than seeing all his witnesses in a huddle discussing the case. The witness is then taken to a quiet place and interviewed in what is hopefully a neutral, fact-finding manner. Witnesses can be easily swayed so questions like ‘Was the gun black?’ are not acceptable, as it gives the witnesses only the option of yes or no. If the gun was black with a chrome slide, an investigator who does not know how to interview a witness will never discover this information.”
The Zombie Factor
Let’s face it, the first few people who report zombie attacks are going to fall into two categories: those who will think they’re seeing something else that doesn’t involve zombies and those who report seeing a zombie and aren’t believed.
The first kind will be the most common because the phrase “hey, I think that’s a zombie attack” just isn’t likely to pop into most people’s heads. Even if we see a vicious fight and someone is getting bitten, the assumption will very likely be: Some crazy person is attacking that guy. Maybe followed by “I’d better call this in,” or “I’d better mind my own business,” or even “I’d better get the hell out of here.”
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Why Zombies?
“Because we can identify with zombies so easily. If we sit in front of the television, we’re zombies. When we work at a repetitive job we become robotic zombies; when we wait in lines we feel like cattle or zombies, when you get tired you feel like a zombie…eyes glazed over…it’s late…I am a zombie…”—Dan McConnell, comic book writer, penciler, and inker who has worked on The X-Men, Captain Universe, and Zombies of Liberty
“Why Zombies you ask? And I say why not? I’m not sure why people are so fascinated by zombies but I’d have to say that it has to do with man’s innate fear of death. In a way it allows him to see death after death, and that is a scary thing. Sort of like letting someone walk into a morgue to see a body under the sheet and asking them if they want to pick up the sheet and take one quick peek at the body. I think that most people have a sick enough sense of curiosity that they would want to take just a peek.”—David A. Prior, writer/director Zombie Wars (2006).
“Zombies are a blank screen onto which we can project whatever fears we are having as a society. Zombies can represent our unease over terrorists, super-viruses, nuclear war, crime or civil unrest. And often in zombie stories, only a few humans are left to fight the zombies off, and I think that taps into something universal as well—our fear of being left alone. Or perhaps a fear of those closest to us dying, leaving us alone to fend for ourselves in a hostile world. As a society, we also place a high importance on the physical body. In missing persons cases or murders, we often hear people talk about the need to find the “remains” and give them a proper burial. But in a zombie story, it is that physical vessel—the human body—that refuses to rest easy. There is no closure after death in a zombie story. I think that’s terrifying.”—David Jack Bell, author of The Condemned (Delirium Books, 2008).
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Art of the Dead—Lisa Anne Riley
Dead Heads
“I like to see more about the zombies’ view on things. Even with primitive brains they must have some form of thought regarding what has happened to them. Did they leave an ‘afterlife’? Are they upset over leaving it? Does it physically hurt to be dead? Emotionally? Can they still feel any range of emotion?”
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The credibility of the witness in such a case will always be in question until overwhelming corroborating evidence is brought forth. And even then there will be resistance to the idea. Even the integrity of the individual witness doesn’t really help the case, not in matters of the fantastic. Information even from a so-called “reliable witness” is not taken as proof positive until there is actually positive proof. After all, President Jimmy Carter filed an eyewitness account of a UFO sighting with NICAP,7 which was made public while he was governor of Georgia; and in October of 1973, Ohio Governor John Gilligan also made headlines by reporting having seen a UFO. Many people claim to have spotted the Jersey Devil, including Commodore Stephen Decatur (the famous American naval hero), who insisted that he fired a cannonball at it while at the Hanover Iron Works in 1803; and Joseph Bonaparte, the former king of Spain and brother of Napoleon, saw the creature when he was hunting in the Pine Barrens near Bordentown, New Jersey, where he was living in exile. A couple of years ago, CNN ran footage of a sea monster8 in Lake Van, Turkey. While these reports, and the thousands more made by less famous witnesses, are fascinating and make a lot of people go “Hmmmmm,” they have not resulted in a change of belief by the masses or a call to action by the authorities.
For our zombie hunt, we are going to need solid forensic evidence.
JUST THE FACTS
Watching the Detectives
Detectives are specialists whose job is more complex and far less glamorous than what you see on TV. Most of them aren’t like Sherlock Holmes, able to recognize the fifty different kinds of dirt by visual observation alone. Nor are they the boneheaded slobs who can’t solve a crime unless a wisecracking private investigator shows them how to use both hands to find their buttocks. They aren’t loose cannons who drive quarter-million-dollar sports cars; they don’t trample on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to solve their crimes; they’re not a pack of cynical hard-drinking womanizers who have noirish internal monologues playing in their heads; and they don’t kick the tar out of suspects just because they can. They also don’t use shtick: no rumpled Columbo trench coats, no lollipops or hand-sewn Italian Kojak suits; no pastel Crockett and Tubbs jackets or cigarette boats.
Real police detectives are smart, highly trained, deeply experienced investigators who use science, process, and routine to collect evidence, build cases, conduct investigations, form theories, and arrest suspects. Sherlock Holmes, entertaining as he is to read about, would be a freak.
I’ve always been impressed by the presentation of detectives in the better police procedural books and movies. The gold-standard for these being the 87th Precinct series by the late (and very much missed) Ed McBain. His detectives were workmanlike, dogged, imaginative, and relentless without being obsessive. He also showed that detectives varied from mediocre (Andy Parker of that series) to very, very good (Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer); and they all relied on the use of established process and procedures rather than sudden intuitive leaps.
“The only true to life portrayal of police that is on today is the HBO series, The Wire,” says Detective Mike Buben of the Lower Makefield Township Police in Pennsylvania, “Probably due to the fact that the creator is a former police officer from Baltimore.”
“Fort Apache, The Bronx9; The New Centurions; and The Choirboys10 are hands down the finest motion pictures about street cops out there; realistically portraying all that is both good and bad about police culture,” says Detective Joe McKinney. “The detective’s job, so far as I’ve seen, doesn’t get portrayed with much realism on the big screen.” But he concedes, “On TV, The First 48 did a great job of showing how a case grows and takes shape. Law and Order tends to have too many rich, glamorous suspects to claim any sort of realism, even though they claim to rip their plots straight from the headlines. Real police work is about eighty percent junkies, thieves, and prostitutes, and I think the public would view the kind of people we normally deal with as more monstrous than any fictional monster I’ve read.”
When detectives arrive at our crime scene they have two immediate concerns: identifying, preserving, and collective evidence; and apprehending the suspect. Since our attacker is still at large, the lead detective will coordinate with the supervising patrol sergeant to begin a search of the area. K-9 dogs would likely be called in, and police departments in surrounding areas would be notified.
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The detectives then do a walk-through during which they try to reconstruct the events leading up to and following the crime. Once they have a good sense of what’s what, they can make decisions on which kinds of evidence are likely to be of use (though often much more is collected than is actually used), and for a while they yield the floor to the crime scene technicians.
Expert Witness
“Ninety percent of departments do not have a ‘typical’ Crime Scene Unit,” observes Greg Dagnan. “Detectives, investigators or specially trained patrol officers collect evidence at crime scenes. For those agencies that do have specialized units, they usually have enough people that at least 4–5 persons can respond to a major crime scene, while they may go to smaller crime scenes in groups of two. Crime Scene Units are civilian employees who do the collection while investigators are interviewing people, conducting a neighborhood canvas, etc. Some are officers that have transferred into the crime scene department from other divisions within the department. Generally each department must decide how to configure their unit according to crime rates, resources and community perception. I have trained departments that only have one official Crime Scene Investigator, but that person coordinates, and is assisted by, Patrol and Detectives. Bottom line is that each agency does something a little different.”
San Antonio Homicide Detective Joe McKinney gives this rundown on how detectives manage a case: “Detectives handle incidents (like the attack on the research center guard) as a team, dividing up responsibilities. Later, when one detective gets the report responsibility for the incident, he or she collates all the material generated by the team and puts them together into a document called a Prosecution Guide, which the District Attorney’s Office uses for trial. But when the incident is still fresh, one or two detectives will make the scene, speak with the handling officers and their supervisor, request an evidence technician (the CSU guys) and tell the evidence tech what, specifically, they need. Every crime scene is unique and there is almost always something in particular above and beyond the normal tests and evidentiary protocol a detective wants to get. Then the detectives at the scene will arrange for witnesses to be transported to Headquarters for statements. Detectives at the office will receive and interview witnesses. Suspects will either be arrested and taken to jail or returned to the detective’s office for an interview—again, this depends on the specific arrest, search, and seizure issues surrounding the case.”
Detective Michael Buben of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania, comments on the differences in the way big and small town cases are handled: “Larger departments have Violent Crime Squad detective and/or homicide units. In local departments such as ours, any detective working would respond, as well as some off duty detectives called in to assist. Detectives from the District Attorney’s office also are used to assist in such investigations, as well. There are a lot of experienced investigators who can be brought in to handle a major crime.”
Who responds, and when, depends on a variety of factors. “The normal response time depends on whether detectives are on duty,” says Buben. “In small towns this might not be the case 24/7. If so, they usually respond with—or within minutes of—patrol officers. Otherwise, it may be the time it takes a detective to respond from home to the station, then to the scene, but in any case usually less than an hour.”
The Zombie Factor
So far the police are going to be completely within the realm of known crime scene procedure and science. Cursory examination of the victim will show bite marks, but that is not all that rare in violent crime. There’s nothing yet that screams “zombie!”
Since a witness provided a description, the detectives will begin their search for the assailant while at the same time overseeing the collection of evidence from the crime scene.
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Hard Science: Cadaver Dogs
Just as there are specialties for police officers, there are specialties for police dogs. Some sniff out bombs, some sniff out drugs…but there is one kind specially trained to sniff out human remains.
Cadaver dogs.
These dogs were used heavily during the search for remains following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. They’re used in mine collapses, avalanches, the search for remains in wooded areas, and in a variety of ways. What a human might overlook a dog will find. In training, special chemicals are used to simulate the smell of rotting flesh.
These dogs don’t dig up remains. They locate and then alert their handler by a prearranged signal—sometimes a bark, sometimes by just sitting at a spot where something is buried.
These dogs are used instead of search and rescue (S&R) dogs because S&Rs are used to locate living humans. Cadaver dogs locate decomposing flesh.
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JUST THE FACTS
The Manhunt
In cases where a witness has been able to provide a physical description and a general direction in which the suspect has fled, an immediate search will be launched. In our scenario, the search extends to a wooded area across from the research center, though the grounds of the center will also be searched thoroughly in case the suspect doubled back, or if there is another possible witness or victim, or if the suspect had a confederate.
In large cities, officers may be called in from elsewhere in the precinct or from adjoining precincts. In the suburbs and more rural areas, officers from neighboring towns will likely join in, and the state police may lend a hand. If available, local or state police helicopters may be requested, and if the wooded area is part of a state park system, then some forest rangers may be brought in or consulted. K-9 units will almost certainly be requested for a search in the woods, and police dogs can track through all sorts of conditions, even in rain or snow.
A blood-covered suspect, on foot, walking in a jerky erratic fashion will not have covered a lot of ground, and unless a vehicle has picked him up, it’s very likely the manhunt will find him.
Expert Witness
The success of a manhunt depends on a variety of factors, including time of day, weather conditions, manpower, and available resources; and this will vary greatly from department to department.
San Antonio Detective Joe McKinney offers this insight into a rural manhunt: “If it’s a small town, there simply won’t be that much manpower available to conduct a full-blown search. A town of, say, ten thousand people, may have, at most, a police department of 90 or so officers…and that’s officers of every rank, not just street officers. If you consider that a department of that size may have 15 or so officers on the street at any given time, you get an idea of the kind of resources they would be able to deploy. Another thing that would limit the scope of the manhunt is that the suspect in this case is probably known. If he broke out of a hospital (or was a test subject at a research center), chances are they have his name and date of birth and other information on file already. Every police department is going to initiate a manhunt, given the violent crime committed; however, the sense of urgency is minimized if the suspect is known beforehand. The reason is because it is much easier to file an at-large arrest warrant for the individual and transmit his information to police agencies across the region using NCIC (National Crime Information Center) so that the combined weight of many agencies can be brought to bear on the suspect.”
Joseph Sciscio, a detective with the Bensalem Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, adds: “Considering this is a small suburban town I would expect everyone from the chief on down to be involved along with the solicitation of other agencies including local sheriffs, surrounding jurisdictions, even fire, police and public works departments for less involved tasks of traffic control.”
“If the search area is anywhere near a waterway,” adds Chief Ken Coluzzi of Lower Makefield Police in Pennsylvania, “then the marine search units will be called in as well as helicopters. The search will be expanded when additional help arrives. Additional personnel usually begin to arrive within ten minutes or so.”
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&nbs
p; Art of the Dead—Ryan Allen
Help Is on the Way
“I think that fast zombies are a lot more scary and dangerous. But, I’m afraid that if zombies were real, they’d be slow. You have to consider that they’re rotting away. Having your meat and organs decaying into fetid pulp would really put a kink in your sprinting ability.”
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McKinney says: “Let’s assume that this department is bringing all available resources to bear in this case. First off, the street officers responding to the scene will call in the suspect’s description and any other relevant pieces of information. A supervisor will almost certainly make the scene and will order officers in the area to set up a quadrant around the suspect’s probable location. In this case, officers will set up along the boundary of the forested land. The supervisor might order officers to park along the roadway next to the forest. Those officers would remain at their posts until dismissed by the supervisor. The supervisor will order his or her communications personnel to contact neighboring jurisdictions and the suspect’s information would be forwarded to them. They would be responsible for mobilizing their own response. Beyond that, the key concept here is officer safety. Unless the officers responded to the scene soon enough to see the suspect going into the forest, they would never blindly charge in after him. Witnesses may state that he is not armed, but suspects are always treated like they are. That’s just sound tactics.”