This may be an opportune moment to post a message that I have previously posted in another U.K. case last year, so that it reminds those of you who are interested, just what is happening behind the scenes of Julia’s Investigation:
With any major enquiry wether that be a Murder / Homicide or a Missing Person, a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO (Senior Investigative Officer ) as the lead.
Certainly in the UK, a Policy Book is commenced and everything that you know, everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book . Even if the SIO considers a line of enquiry but makes the decision to discount it at that time, they MUST write it in the Policy Book and explain their reasoning for its consideration and then the reasoning for the decision taken to put it on hold or fully discount it and a full justification is written.
This justification is imperative for EVERY decision made wether it progresses the investigation forward or wether it’s just considered and discounted. You can have an infinite number of Policy Books by the time that the case is finalised at Crown Court I think the most Policy Books that I have ever written for an investigation is 6 and they are thick books with carbonated paper in between to enable the SIO to rip out the carbonated duplicate and enter it immediately into the HOLMES system . So it’s a LOT of writing.
I was responsible for leading a number of Murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of Detectives and Forensic experts amongst other support staff.
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a MURDER INVESTIGATION STRATEGY and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual
So at the start of the Investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen and other pertinent information.
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis.
6. Forensics -
Allocation of Forensic staff and any imperative retrieval’s made . Therefore, what do we have ? How are the Forensic Submissions to be prioritised? Which are being Submitted to the Forensic Laboratory and their cost? ( Forensics are a HUGE cost to the Investigation and the SIO has to make decisions having cognisance to the budgetary requirements and the Annual Forensic allocated budget.)
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
Paperwork recovered for treatment.
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval as exhibits.
8. CCTV- What’s available ? How do we prioritise it? Which is viewed in what order ? (Again bearing in mind the cost of this exercise and the cost to the investigation of Officer Allocation to look through each and doing your best to ensure that it’s relevant and timely).
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family, people who are in the area at the relevant time who come forward as witnesses .
10. Family History and antecedents and any information deemed relevant to the enquiry.
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and graded according to their priority, those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording ).
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses to be identified and interviewed and statements taken.
14. Interviews - suspect/s? Who will conduct them ? Will it be ‘downstream monitored’ to allow ‘real time’ alibis and further enquiries to be made?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence. A VERY IMPORTANT ROLE as this is the easiest way, alongside Procedural issues, to lose the case at Crown Court).
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS?
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants pertaining to the investigation.
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process which again is very important).
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO and this role can continue long after any Crown Court case and conviction.
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press.
21. House to House enquiries
22. Forensic facial mapping/ Facial recognition/ Forensic composite sketch of offender
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides MOBILE PHONE DATA is CCTV . Both are huge, time consuming and onerous tasks. ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones, dashcam from vehicles and private residential CCTV etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a Major Investigation and that’s before you go to a Judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK .And then putting the whole file of evidence and Investigation together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my Detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as a suspect, an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation. Everything has to be prioritised as much as reasonably possible .
In the UK we have HOLMES ( Home Office Major Enquiry System ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three Police officers and Police supervisors above each officer, working with a large number of administrative support staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .
So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .
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