Physical Evidence Never Lies
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Historically, accident and criminal investigations have been centered around the least reliable evidence available: the statements made by witnesses. While all evidence obtained in the course of an investigation is important and useful, one need only a brief experience with the task of investigating any type of accident or criminal act to learn that every witness will tell a different story. Oftentimes the differences are minor, but in some cases the discrepancies between witnesses' stories can be vast.
Things get even more interesting when physical evidence is added to the mix. What years of documenting and analyzing physical evidence will teach you is that when there are five witnesses to a crime or accident, there will be six sides to the story: the five witness accounts and the story that the physical evidence will tell.
While physical evidence never lies, poor analysis of physical evidence can be misleading. So what qualifies a person to analyze physical evidence? Two things: education and experience.
The problem with finding an expert in, for example, traffic accident reconstruction is that few people have both the practical experience and the proper education. Most traffic accident reconstructionists come from one of two common backgrounds: years of engineering education or years of practical police experience. Each background has it benefits. Engineers understand the mechanics of traffic crashes in ways that most police officers never will, but police officers gain an unprecedented amount of hands-on experience actually going to traffic crash scenes. While the engineer may be very adept at the science of traffic crashes, he may never have been to an actual crash scene. The police officer, on the other hand, may be very familiar with the traffic accident scene, but his lack of scientific education may lead him to misapply scientific principles and thus come to erroneous conclusions.
If you search deep enough, however, you will find that there are a few of us out there that have both the education and the experience. This is the level of expertise you will find at Knox & Associates.
Things get even more interesting when physical evidence is added to the mix. What years of documenting and analyzing physical evidence will teach you is that when there are five witnesses to a crime or accident, there will be six sides to the story: the five witness accounts and the story that the physical evidence will tell.
While physical evidence never lies, poor analysis of physical evidence can be misleading. So what qualifies a person to analyze physical evidence? Two things: education and experience.
The problem with finding an expert in, for example, traffic accident reconstruction is that few people have both the practical experience and the proper education. Most traffic accident reconstructionists come from one of two common backgrounds: years of engineering education or years of practical police experience. Each background has it benefits. Engineers understand the mechanics of traffic crashes in ways that most police officers never will, but police officers gain an unprecedented amount of hands-on experience actually going to traffic crash scenes. While the engineer may be very adept at the science of traffic crashes, he may never have been to an actual crash scene. The police officer, on the other hand, may be very familiar with the traffic accident scene, but his lack of scientific education may lead him to misapply scientific principles and thus come to erroneous conclusions.
If you search deep enough, however, you will find that there are a few of us out there that have both the education and the experience. This is the level of expertise you will find at Knox & Associates.
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