Forget what you see on 'CSI' about crime-investigation career
By JOANNE KIMBERLIN
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 3, 2006
DIFFERENT WORLDS
On TV:
Budget: The sky’s the limit.
On the job: Another perfect match. You’re going away, pal.
Gear: A lot of expensive, flashy gadgets make for good drama.
Satisfaction: We’ll have this case wrapped up in an hour – even
with commercials.
Real life:
Budget: In a word? Tight.
On the job: Hey, that blood turned out to be ketchup. Dang!
Gear: Basic insight into human nature is key.
Satisfaction: Frustration, modest pay, nasty smells, horrific scenes.
The work is hard – but cool.
VIRGINIA BEACH - Beth Dunton does not wear short skirts or sequined tops to work. Her hair isn't particularly styled. Her shoes are sensible. She doesn't always get her man.
Dunton is a crime scene investigator, but unlike her counterparts on TV's hit "CSI" dramas, her days are not glamorous. She works in bland government buildings, pitting small budgets against big backlogs. When terrible things happen, she runs toward them, where she gets rained on, bug-bit or caked with black fingerprint powder. She comes home smelling of death, fire, vomit or some other foul substance. Her back aches from stooping over. Her heart carries the weight of what she has seen.
She doesn't mean to discourage. It's just that real life tends to veer from the script.
Addressing a fresh crop of star-struck forensic students at Tidewater Community College, Dunton opens with a question.
"How many of you watch 'CSI '?"
Hands pop up across the room.
"You poor people."
It's known as the "CSI" Effect, and it's influencing careers, court cases, college curriculum, laboratory loads and victims' expectations.
Gritty, fast-paced, thick with graphic flashbacks that reconstruct the crimes, the first in the franchise, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," set in glitzy Las Vegas, made its debut on CBS in 2000. Two years later, it was the No. 1 prime time TV show in the nation. Since then, it has spawned two spin offs, "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: NY." This year, the Miami version was deemed the world's most popular show in a TV ratings study of 20 countries.
Each series has its own recurring cast of actors. Armed with perfect teeth, designer clothes and an impressive arsenal of high-tech tools, they've put a hip edge on the old whodunit and, for the first time in anyone's memory, made forensics seem, well, sexy.
"There was a time when we couldn't get students interested in these classes," said Bill Eggleston, chairman of the forensic science department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "Everyone thought this stuff was just boring lab work. The TV show sure changed that."
So much so that colleges have had to scramble to add classes. VCU, TCC, Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University all report beefed up and busy forensic programs. At VCU, 15 students signed up in 2001 when the school kicked off its program; 450 enrolled this fall. The field is now one of the university's top majors.
"And when I talk with the students coming in," Eggleston said, "almost every one of them mentions 'CSI.' "
Pam Lepley, VCU's media relations person, says this sort of side effect has surfaced before. She recalled the "Sex and the City" phase, when students flocked to public relations, the profession of bombshell character Samantha Jones. Home and garden programs on HGTV sparked a rush for careers in interior and fashion design. "ER" inspired future doctors. "L.A. Law" hatched attorneys.
"It's no different than what I did," Lepley said. "I'm 51, and I went into journalism because of Woodward and Bernstein and 'All t he President's Men.' "
The "CSI" Effect, however, is reaching beyond campus borders.
Donald Smith, a criminal justice professor at ODU, has a background in jury selection. He says shows such as "CSI" are tainting juries.
"They create these ridiculous expectations," he said.
Today's jurors expect to see sophisticated, expensive clues, such as DNA analysis, even when they're not relevant or reasonable to have. Not delivering is viewed as a hole in the case.
"I was just talking to some prosecutors this morning," Smith said, "and they were saying that now they have to bring in scientists to explain the absence of such evidence or to explain that the kinds of things you see on TV are not realistic."
"CSI" also is causing chaos in other areas of law enforcement, said VCU's Eggleston: "Witnesses, victims, they expect officers to collect all this evidence now, steering wheels and just everything, because they've seen what happens with it on TV. So the police - they watch the shows, too - they're sending more evidence to the labs than they used to. That's part of why we have such a backlog there now."
Eggleston has watched a few episodes of "CSI" and found them "entertaining."
"As a scientist, I can see where things are made up, like using the wrong instrument for the thing they're trying to do. What my colleagues and I also notice - let me put it this way: None of us drive Hummers. And the women don't wear high heels around the lab."
Beth Dunton lowers the metal blinds in Room F106. This is Principles of Criminal Investigations, a TCC class held at the Virginia Beach campus. Eighteen students are on the roll, and Dunton is today's guest speaker. With 16 years of experience behind her, she knows her subject well. She's a supervisor in Virginia Beach's forensic service unit.
With a small bottle in one hand, she strolls across the front of the darkened classroom, dripping a scarlet trail of blood along the white linoleum.
Out comes the Luminol, a staple for busting bad guys on "CSI." Dunton sprays it on the blood trail, then shines a black light.
"Now, you see how it glows bluish-green?" she asks. "Not red, like on TV?"
Slip-ups like that don't seem to dampen "CSI" f ever. Tiffany Aspiras, 19, says the show led her to this class.
"After I started watching it, it was just like, I want to do that," she says. "It just seems like such an adrenaline rush, to actually be at a crime scene - to find the smallest thing that makes a big difference in a case."
The work can be thrilling, Dunton says: "I love my job. When you put together the pieces of the puzzle with what's left behind, it's really cool."
It's also gut-wrenching.
"The technicians and myself - we go every day into the worst that people can do to each other."
There also is plenty of frustration. Lab results can take weeks or even months to receive. Records are incomplete. Databases aren't linked.
"And yet," Dunton marvels, " 'CSI' gets a DNA hit every time! Do you have any idea how hard it is just to get a good fingerprint?"
Then there are the times when even the savviest investigator encounters the kind of moments that aren't written into scripts. Such as when "blood" turns out to be paint or ketchup.
Or: "I can't tell you how many times we get to a scene," Dunton says, " and there's a car in a ditch, and it's abandoned, and it's got blood and hair on the grill. So we collect our samples, and we send them in, and it turns out to be a deer. That's a lot of time and about $5,000 wasted."
There are some good things about the "CSI" Effect. Dunton says 128 people applied for a recent job opening in her unit.
"We used to have to take what we got," she says. "Now, we've got people applying who have master's degrees in the field."
Which brings up yet another reality: Forensic types are typically public servants. Pay is modest, with starting salaries from $30,000 to $40,000. Positions are limited.
"Where are all these people going to work?" ODU's Smith wonders.
Other wake-ups for "CSI" hopefuls: A heavy study load of biology, chemistry, calculus and the like. The realization that, even without commercial breaks, cases usually take longer than an hour to solve. The discovery that real crime fighters work in niches of the field, and no single person totes a gun, captures suspects, extracts confessions and comes up with the microscopic proof.
Also: "Dead bodies are not usually in pristine condition," Dunton says. "There are awful smells."
She does show the students some gee-whiz gadgets from her investigator's toolbox, such as invisible theft detection powder and goggles that can make fingerprints appear to glow. The fancy stuff, however, can't replace the simple. Few tools are more valuable than a basic insight into human nature.
Take burglars, for example. They like to make sure no one is home, but they don't want to make neighbors suspicious. So they tend to ring the doorbell first - without their gloves - making it a likely spot to find a choice print. The same goes for refrigerator handles. Crooks tend to peek inside the fridge just before they leave. For some reason, they often shed their gloves first.
Ah, those little mistakes. The characters on "CSI" are good at finding them. And making them.
It bugs the pros. Dunton points to her tightly-bound ponytail.
"Every time I see one of those women bent over a body with her flowing hair, all I can see is, 'Hey, she's dropping trace evidence all over that scene!' "
Reach Joanne Kimberlin at (757) 446-2338 or joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com.
© 2006 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com