subject: A Police Light Is Also A Crime-solving Weapon [print this page] A police light is an innocuous looking thingA police light is an innocuous looking thing. Simple models of it will look like an ordinary torchlight that any layman may carry. But simple models of a police light are rare these days. Most models are complicated ones packing within it myriad capabilities. Some are crime-solving aids important in evidence management.
A crime scene may contain too much evidence or too little evidence. For collecting, categorizing, and transferring these telltale evidences into laboratories and courtrooms, the right hand assistant of the police will be his police light. These lights can be changed from a spotlight to a flood light to a search light to suit the light requirement of the scene.
A paint chip left at the site of a car collision from where the cars have fled is an important piece of evidence for the police. The analysis of it will have to be done in a laboratory by laser ablation or similar techniques, but police will have to collect those chips or bits of broken glass before clearing the road for other vehicles. To collect these tiny bits, a powerful police light is very important especially if the accident has happened at night.
Crime scene leftovers will also include DNA samples like skin scrapings or nail marks or saliva, that have to be submitted to forensic laboratories for testing and matching. These have to be collected before dust or wind or human intrusion removes the evidence. Some of these things may be minute and invisible to the naked eye but a police light designed to be used at the crime scene will have magnifying glasses that will make most of these visible enough to be transferred to marked pouches for transportation.
When searching for drugs at a crime scene, even when the drugs might have been removed, traces of it will be available on the dash or in the boot of the car, on the currency notes the user has handled, or even on clothes. Though the narcotic test kits to test the surface are generally carried separately, in some cases it is incorporated into a police light. Being equipped with a flashlight with a drugs test kit inside makes things easy for a policeman. Even while he is investigating a crime unrelated to drugs, he will be able to test the surface if he suspects its possibility in the surroundings.
Another crime scene aid that has become part of a police light is a digital camera. Photographing the crime scene is very important and when a camera is incorporated into a police light, the user can manage both the examining of the scene and photographing the scene together.
Likewise, a camcorder may also be part of a police light. Video recording has been found to be exceptionally helpful in crime solving. By continuously videotaping the crime scene, and replaying the tape, police is sometimes able to see how evidence has been destroyed. Minute evidence may sometimes be lost by the incursion of natural agents like winds, or through inadvertent or purposeful human intervention.
