ALUMNI PROFILE
Sarah Owen is portrayed in a typical lab setting at the Grayslake campus to demonstrate the actual tools she uses in her profession. The college has an evidence microscope available for classroom use.
Real-life A Crime Sleuths On television crime dramas, the life of evidence sleuths is filled with glamour and drama. The reality is far different, our experts say.
sleek crime fighter wearing a leather jacket, sunglasses and stilettos speeds to a crime scene in a Hummer. The evidence she collects is rushed to the lab, the findings processed in minutes with state-of-the-art equipment. Her razor sharp intuition is confirmed. The DNA of the culprit everyone else fails to suspect is all over the evidence. So goes a typical plotline of wildly popular crime shows like “CSI.” The reality is far different, as judged by the experiences of criminal justice experts such as forensic scientist Sarah Owen (’03), adjunct professor and police commander John Briscoe, and network security analysts Ken Kerasek and Sunshine Voelker, who received training in CLC’s digital forensics program. What happens at rapid-fire pace in an hour crime show in reality often involves slow, methodical work and little glamour.
Obtaining a DNA sample, for example, often means examining clothing and bedding that can be blood-soaked or stained with semen or saliva. It’s part of the job, like painstakingly piecing evidence together. “They (television characters) do blood work or some fingerprinting, and the suspect’s face pops up on a screen in a matter of seconds, showing who it matches,” said Owen, who holds a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, with a concentration in criminalistics. “There aren’t computer systems out there to do that,” she said, shaking her head. In the real world, it can take weeks to analyze a piece of evidence, have it peer reviewed and produce a final report, Owen said. Continued to page 8
ALUMNEWS | 7