Cops to get homicide training

Police Commissioner Trevor Paul announced yesterday that members of the newly formed Homicide Bureau will be the first to benefit from the training which will include an overview of major aspects of crime scene management and general evidence recovery, as well as a team approach to management and evidence collection from the FBI. Courses to be facilitated by JSSI will deal with interview techniques, canvassing neighbourhoods, fingerprints, trace evidence (eg hair samples, paint, fibres), biological evidence (blood spatters), packaging and impression evidence (tyre marks, bites and serial numbers).

A team of instructors from the United States — Professor William King of Bowling Green State University and Detective Dominick Giangrasso (ret) of the Baltimore Police Department — will be teaching the course. King has extensive classroom and field experience in the homicide investigation process, while Giangrasso has more than 25 years of experience as a police officer, homicide detective and private security executive.

"We are hopeful that these training sessions will increase the ability of police officers to secure evidence, obtain witnesses to these violent crimes, and more importantly, make arrests of suspects. This in turn will further lead to a reduction in violence," Paul said.

JSSI is a US-based law and justice consulting firm that specialises in research, training and technology. It is affiliated with the transformation team at George Mason University’s Centre for Justice, Leadership and Management.

In November the Police Service expanded and reformed the Homicide Bureau to centralise and track all homicide cases, conduct in-depth investigations and detect homicides. These changes were based on a recommendation from the Homicide Prevention Working Group, an interagency task force established in August to reduce the number of homicides in TT.