In a new blog post, Lee Lofland offers tips for ensuring the hero in your mystery or police procedural handles firearms evidence accurately. “How and what type of evidence recovered from those weapons can have a huge impact on the subsequent criminal trials,” Lofland writes. “Proper evidence collection procedures … well, they can make or break a case.” His tips include:
- Wear gloves and a face mask to unload firearms prior to delivery them to the property room.
- Collect all trace evidence.
- Store firearms in paper-based packaging, never plastic.
- Do not mark or deface a bullet or handle one with bare hands.
- Do not dig out bullets embedded in an object. Remove or cut away the portion of the article containing the bullet.
- Use fingers or rubber-tipped forceps to remove a bullet from a body during an autopsy, to avoid defacing the bullet.
