George Zimmerman's Failure To Secure A Crime Scene

The first officer to respond to a crime scene has many responsibilities. Among these responsibilities are securing the crime scene, the preservation of evidence, and interviewing witnesses. An officer who fails in any of these duties could potentially put the entire case in jeopardy, allowing a perpetrator to go free.

One of the first things that an officer must do when arriving at a crime scene is to take all necessary measures to secure that scene. A perimeter should be established which includes the area directly around the incident, as well as a larger perimeter where additional evidence may be found. One example of a failure to secure a crime scene occurred in the JonBenet Ramsey case in 1996. Police were called to the Ramsey home when

JonBenet’s parents discovered a ransom note and saw that their daughter was missing from her bedroom. The ransom note stated that there would be a phone call made to discuss terms of the ransom. “It was while the police were waiting for the call that they made several critical mistakes. They did not conduct a proper search of the house, the area was not sealed off and friends were allowed to walk in and out at their leisure.” (Bardsley) By not securing the house and the area immediately surrounding it, the officers allowed potentially crucial evidence to be destroyed, and exposed the area to contamination by outside sources. Had these officers followed the correct procedure for securing a crime scene, evidence may have been found which would link a suspect to the crime. This case remains unsolved today, possibly as a result of the errors made by the first officers at the scene.

In the Trayvon Martin case of 2012, George Zimmerman was accused of fatally shooting Martin.

When officers responded to the scene, Zimmerman’s vehicle was not secured as part of the crime scene. Zimmerman’s wife moved the vehicle before police had a chance to examine it. “The vehicle was an important link in the fatal encounter because it was where Mr. Zimmerman called the police to report a suspicious teenager in a hooded sweatshirt roaming through the Retreat. Mr. Zimmerman also said he was walking back to the vehicle when he was confronted by Mr. Martin, who was unarmed, before shooting him.” (Kovaleski) Had the responding officers secured Zimmerman’s vehicle, they may have found pertinent evidence on it or inside it which could have clarified some of the details of what transpired that

night.

Errors in police procedure are not limited to sensationalized murder cases, however. In Houston, Texas in 2011, an male intruder entered Indira Paz’s house, tied her up, and raped her in front of her young daughter. Three officers responded to the incident. While waiting for investigators to arrive, two of the officers were called to help at a nearby car accident, and the third, Officer Alan Sweatt, left the house shortly thereafter. “As soon as no other officers were present, Sweatt left Paz. He left her 4-year-old daughter-made-witness, left the cousin who’d found and untied Paz, left the dresser drawers her rapist had emptied, the window he broke, the plastic ties he used to restrain her, the clothes she wore before and after the attack, a sliver of wrapper from his condom, and a crumpled tissue he used to clean himself afterward. Sweatt did so believing that no other officer or investigative team was coming to collect evidence or to notice his absence. Sweatt left the Paz residence and went to a convenience store. There, he wrote a report stating that no evidence existed at the crime scene.” (DePrang) When an investigator did arrive at the home, he found Paz and her family cleaning up the house, destroying potential evidence. Had Sweatt followed proper procedure and remained at the house to keep the scene secure, evidence may have been found which would have led to the identity of Paz’s attacker. Instead, his negligence is one of the reasons that this case remains unsolved.

Once a crime scene has been secured, the responding officers must take precautions to preserve any evidence which may be contained within the scene.

Upon discovering the horrific crime scenes of the Tate and LaBianca murders perpetrated by the followers of Charles Manson in 1969, responding officers made a series of critical mistakes regarding preservation of evidence. The first error occurred when Officer Jerry Joe DeRosa, while walking down the Tate’s driveway, noticed blood on a button that operated the gate to the driveway. "Officer DeRosa, who was charged with securing and protecting the scene until investigating officers arrived, now pressed the button himself, successfully opening the gate but also creating a superimposure that obliterated any print that may have been there.” (Bugliosi 14) By placing his own fingerprint over a fingerprint that may have already been on the button, DeRosa destroyed a key piece of evidence which could have led to a suspect and a

conviction.

Another mistake made by the responding police officers involved the movement of items found at the crime scene. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses was mysteriously moved from the place it was originally discovered to a different location, six feet away. In addition, “Two pieces of gun grip, first seen near the entryway, were now under a chair in the living room... A third piece of gun grip, smaller than the others, was later found on the front porch.” (Bugliosi 17) The officers’ failure to maintain the integrity of the crime scene evidence could have potentially endangered the prosecution of the perpetrators of this crime.

The errors continued at the Tate murder scene when officers, in an attempt to cover the gruesome nature of the scene, placed sheets found in the home over the bodies of the victims. Fibers from these sheets would have then gotten mixed with any fibers which may have already been on the bodies - fibers that could have been from the clothing of the murderers.
These fibers “could have been observed through a microscope for the diameter, length, surface texture, and many other characteristics ... These results would then be compared to the known fibers that have been entered into a database for easy reference. After the fibers already on the body had been contaminated by the sheet fibers, they were deemed practically useless.” (Criminilistica) By destroying what could have been essential physical evidence, the responding officers made it that much more difficult to prosecute this case.

A third responsibility of the first responding officer is the interviewing of witnesses. Returning to the Trayvon Martin murder case, we find another error made by the first officers on the scene. In cases such as this, door-to-door canvassing of the area around the scene may provide important information. In this case, however, officers failed to do an extensive canvass of the area. “If officers had been more thorough, they might have determined that Mr. Martin, 17, was a guest — as opposed to an intruder — at a gated community called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. That would have been an important part of the subjective analysis that night by officers sizing up Mr. Zimmerman’s story.” (Kovaleski) Knowing that Martin was a guest of one of the community residents may have changed the direction of the investigation.

In a recent case, the failure of New Orleans police officers to interview witnesses may have affected the outcome of an investigation into the death of a bicyclist following an accident involving a tractor-trailer. Cyclist Philip Geeck was killed when a truck unexpectedly turned right, across a bike lane, crushing him under the truck’s tires. There were two eyewitnesses to the accident, both of whom remained at the scene to give their statements. “However, nobody ever interviewed them to ask them what they saw, they said. Instead, an investigator on the scene handed each of them a form to fill out. The form asked for their personal information and then had a few lines where they wrote a brief account of what they saw.” (McClendon) The driver of the truck was not charged in the accident. That outcome may have been different, however, if the officers at the scene had interviewed the two witnesses. Both witnesses later stated that the truck did not signal his intent to turn, and appeared to be going straight through the intersection before suddenly making a right turn, leaving Geeck with no time to get out of the way of the truck. Had these witness statements been taken at the time, the driver of the truck may have faced charges in this case.

In April 2004, officers responded to a report of a drunken altercation on a street in Chicago. The victim in this case was David Koschman, who was reportedly punched by another man, Richard J. Vanecko, who later fled the scene. The incident was witnessed by friends of both men. After being struck, Koschman fell and hit his head on the pavement. He was hospitalized until his death twelve days later. “At the time, the police had compiled a list of six witnesses to interview, but detectives didn’t talk with any of them for 13 days after Vanecko punched Koschman, then ran away, Webb said. They didn’t resume investigating until after Koschman died.” (Novak) There is suspicion that the officers did not actively pursue leads in this case because it was discovered that Vanecko was the nephew of then-mayor Richard Daley. Had any of the responding officers not caved to political pressure and instead gone ahead and interviewed these witnesses at the time, it may have not taken nearly ten years to prosecute and convict Vanecko for this crime.

There is a great responsibility placed upon the first responding officer at a crime scene. From securing the scene to preserving evidence to interviewing witnesses - along with a host of other duties - the first officer is charged with maintaining the integrity of the case for prosecution. Failure in any of these areas can cause difficulties at trial or even result in a murderer remaining free.