Violent criminals keep escaping justice, but I sure am taking some nice photos of evidence in this crime scene simulator

Everything I know about crime scene investigations I learned from the TV series CSI: Miami, a show where sexy people get murdered and different sexy people—plus David Caruso—solve the crime by doing lab work.

My memory of the show is that Caruso always kicks off the episode by saying the first part of a sentence, then puts on his sunglasses and finishes the sentence with a devastating zinger related to the sexy murder victim. But that’s sort of not true. His zingers in this 8-minute montage of Horation Caine one-liners are pretty darn underwhelming. Sometimes he just states the obvious, like when a body that had been thrown off a building was determined to have been killed elsewhere:

“Priority number one…” *sunglasses* “…is for us to find the murder scene.”

Yep. That’s… that’s the thing everyone already knows you need to do. Wasn’t a cool thing to say, and didn’t need to be said at all.

Hoping to fill his shoes this week, I’m trying out a new career in Forensics: Crime Scene Detective, and unfortunately it seems I’m about as good at solving crimes as David Caruso is at delivering memorable zingers.

My first case is to collect evidence from a drug dealer’s apartment. Not drugs, unfortunately, but electronic devices that include communications to his clients, perhaps text messages that read “hey if you would you like to buy some illegal drugs hmu 💉💊🌿🤪”

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

At the apartment I get to label, photograph, and collect evidence, which is rad. I’ve seen them do it on TV a million times: placing little yellow plastic numbered markers next to things like bullet holes and blood stains and then taking photos. In the alleged drug dealer’s apartment there are just a couple smartphones and a password written on a post-it note, so I label ’em, snap ’em, and take them back to the lab.

That’s where the problems begin. I use the password to access one of the phones, but the other is damaged so I have to open it up and “desolder” it: heat up the memory card so the glue melts and it can be removed—but without heating it up so much it’s destroyed. I gingerly heat the card and try to remove it. Nope. I try again. Nope.

Ultimately, it goes the way things go anytime I toast a bagel:

It’s untoastedIt’s untoastedIt’s untoastedIt’s burnt beyond all recognition.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

My first act of lab work and I nuke the evidence. And not only did I destroy this device, it turns out I also missed a third electronic device somewhere back at the apartment. I guess this drug dealer… *sunglasses* …is going to continue dealing drugs.

Embarrassingly, I flub my next two cases, too. Finding fingerprints is kinda fun: I shine a purple light around a room until I spot one—and it’s always just one, because people only touch a surface in their home with a single finger then never touch it again. After labeling and snapping a pic, I sprinkle dust on the print and lift it with tape, which I bungle on the first two attempts by using almost no powder and then by using way too much. That makes it tricky, or some might say, impossible, to match prints back in the lab.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

My second case: Unresolved! I’m glad this game doesn’t simulate getting yelled at by the chief of police.

My third time out I’m hopeful because there’s blood, and I’m good at collecting that: you just stick a Q-tip into it. But again, I wind up torpedoing the lab work. I use some sort of machine to extract DNA and then compare results on a readout to see if it matches. I know it must match: this is a crime-solving game, so I figure most of the cases will result in a “solved” scenario instead of a “nope, this one stumped us” ending, but no amount of fiddling with the knobs helps me ID a perp.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

Why am I dealing with squiggly lines, anyway? Aren’t we living in the grim future of no privacy and information harvesting? Surely I should just be able to feed both DNA samples into a computer and it gives me two pictures, and if the guy looks the same in both pictures, he’s guilty. Why doesn’t science work like that?

Finally, I get a case involving a gun. I’m an American and a former gun store owner, so this should be a slam dunk. No one was killed, this is just sort of a “please don’t fire a gun in your apartment” type of case. The bullet is lodged in a wall, so I do that fun thing where you put a stick in the hole and it points where the gun was fired from, and then something more fun: shining a laser along the path of the bullet, and then spraying some kind of mist so the laser can be clearly seen and photographed. Awesome.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

And for the first time, I don’t bungle the evidence back in the lab. I take the gun, fire it into a water tank, and collect the bullet for comparison, which is done basically the same way as in The Great Mouse Detective: line ’em up and twist ’em to see if the scratches match. Finally, I score 100% on a case—and it only took four tries. What’s that famous saying? Let justice be done though three hardened criminals go free so you can imprison one guy who shot his own living room wall.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

It’s about time I reveal the shocking twist in this story: those four cases were just the tutorial. That’s how bad at this I am: I even fail at being given step-by-step instructions on how to do basic tasks. It’s with real trepidation that I take my first real case, praying it involves someone else shooting a gun because I nailed that. C’mon, violent gun murder!

I open the folder and it’s a coin burglary. Shit. Someone has been stealing antique coins. Filled with dread and disappointment, I go to the perp’s apartment.

(Image credit: Aerosoft GmbH)

It’s not so bad: at first. I dust for several fingerprints and do a decent job at lifting them. I find a whole crapload of evidence to label and photograph, including an actual pile of coins—which the game oddly does not consider relevant to this case.

But while I know I’m pretty good at working the crime scene, I’m just utter shit in the lab. And here’s another twist—in my first real case I was also terrible at the scene! I missed several additional fingerprints, a second electronic device, and at least one password. Labwise, I failed to even complete the fingerprint analysis. My score for this case was a mere 16/100.

I hope someone can solve the case of my brief investigative career, because it’s dead.

Performance Evaluation