About the Unit

History….

The Crime Scene Technician Unit (CST) was officially formed in 1999. The South Bend Police Department began a 1 week Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) school for selected Officers. Since then, the South Bend Police Crime Scene Processing course has been an annual event for the Regional Academy. After Officers complete the course they are assigned equipment and utilized as Crime Scene Technicians in addition to their assigned duties. Several Officers with this training have advanced themselves within the Department based on their CST training. Uniform Division CST officers have gone to the Detective Bureau, St. Joseph County Metro Homicide, Special Victims Unit, and the Metro Special Operations section. There are currently 18 Officers in the Crime Scene Technician Program, all of them in the Uniform Division, under the authority of the Uniform Division Chief, and supervised by Pfc. Paul Daley, a CST for over 10 years.

Duties…
After graduating from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy selected officers are given advanced courses on photography, fingerprinting, and evidence collection. Officers who show promise or excellence can then be selected to be part of the Crime Scene Technician program. Being members of this unit they are eligible to receive more advanced training in digital photography, DNA evidence identification and collection, and other advanced crime scene processing techniques. The highly trained Crime Scene Technician’s are utilized in a multitude of crimes wherever the South Bend Police Department is called. They apply their advanced skills, experience, and crime scene knowledge to better collected evidence that might have been over looked by the average patrol officer. The detectives of the South Bend Police department frequently utilize the Crime Scene Technicians when they are called to major crime scenes involving serious injuries, armed robberies and even serious or fatal accidents. Crime Scene Technicians use their extra equipment and skills to gather more evidence related to whatever crime that is being investigated. Through this attention to detail prosecutors are better able to prosecute many crimes where little or no evidence might have been normally available.