Chihuahua— Is it shocking to see dead people every day? Who is in charge of going to a crime scene? Whenever someone dies, whether due to homicide, suicide, or even in a hospital, it is necessary for a criminal expert to go to the scene of the crime and conduct a study to rule out or confirm whether that person was the victim of a crime.
Jesús Manuel Zavala Valles, Alejandro Pando Márquez and Maritsa Parra are in charge of carrying out this work during the weekend and holidays. Their workday begins on Saturday at 8:00 in the morning and ends on Sunday at 8:00 at night.
For 36 hours, they, along with a team of interns, have to be on alert in case something happens.
During this period, several “events” can occur – that’s what they call them – and during this weekend they attended to eight: seven deaths, one robbery and one vehicle seized.
These three experts belong to the Directorate of Forensic Sciences and Expert Services, headed by Javier Sánchez Herrera, and their job is to study the crime, investigate how it occurred, find out or give clues as to who the protagonists could be, as well as analyze the evidence they found at the scene of the crime.
This publishing house had the opportunity to be together with the forensic sciences staff, who remained attentive to the reports at all times.
Shortly before seven in the evening the phone rang… “an event has already been reported,” said one of the experts. One of the interns confirmed the report: “a dead man in a parking lot in the city center.”
“Shall we go?” said ‘Pando’. Two vehicles were used for this discovery, one driven by Jesús Manuel and the other by Ramón Alejandro. The vehicle’s sirens were turned on with the intention of being able to get to the place sooner.
The exact location of this event was on Libertad and 12th Street, right in a parking lot located behind the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ).
The area was already cordoned off by red tape and elements of the Municipal Police of the Morelos District, as well as a Ministerial Police, had arrived.
The criminal investigation team entered the site; they did so first from the edge and after observing the scene they approached the body, which was identified with a yellow cone and the letter “A”.
“This is how we identify people, with letters, for example, if there were other deceased people we would put other cones with other letters of the alphabet on them,” said Jesus.
The man was barefoot, face down, and was wearing blue shorts, a black vest, a blue T-shirt, and a gray hat.
The person, aged between 35 and 40, showed no signs of violence and the probable cause of death was an overdose.
Although that was the initial theory, the deceased was lifted and placed in a black cloth bag by personnel from the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), who later performed the legal autopsy to formally determine the cause of death.
Before that, the criminalists also took down information about the person, the clothes he was wearing, the position he was in and the description of the parking lot where he died.
Back at the forensic offices, Pando explained that when there are other cases in which the person was the victim of a crime and they have to gather evidence, they must be very observant and then also work with everything they find in the area.
LOVE AND COMMITMENT
For Jesús Manuel Zavala Valles, a field criminalistics expert on the weekend and holiday shift, it is very important to carry out his work with love and commitment.
“I think that all of us here are very committed to our work and we do it with love. We do our work with patience and that is very important,” he said.
When asked what their work entails, he said that they are assistants to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in relation to the prosecution of places where a criminal act is presumed to have been committed.
“Our job is to process these sites under established protocols that range from collecting evidence, indicating each one, taking photographs, topographical written documentation of all the work we do, and then we make a report based on the processing we do to give the MP an answer about the cases we handle.”
He also said that in some cases, they also have to attend oral trials to present evidence. “Not in all cases, it depends on whether it is going to be abbreviated, but in those that go to oral trial we have to go.”
For him, his work is very important and although it has nothing to do with the career he studied, this ended up becoming a passion.
“I am a systems engineer, and it may not have anything to do with my career, but I have been here for a long time and something that really caught my attention about this job is that every day is different, no scene is the same, and compared to the other jobs I had, that is something that sparked a lot of interest.”
Likewise, Jesus said that being in criminology makes him feel like he can contribute to people’s lives.
He has been working in Forensic Services since 2009 and joined there after a call for applications.
“Some machines arrived that took photographs of the marks left by weapons on both the shells and the bullets and they were managed by a database and what we did there was to enter those photographs. At that time, they hired only systems engineers and computer science graduates, that’s why I came here.”
Although Jesús started in Ciudad Juárez, when violence increased in 2010, many of his colleagues in the criminalistics department decided to change areas and others left because they did not pass the confidence tests.
“There was an opportunity when the forensic coordinator at that time asked who wanted to work in the field and I raised my hand along with three other colleagues and from there the courses, training, certifications and everything began to date.”
The most complicated events for him are those involving deceased minors.
“Being a family man, those are the most complicated ones; on the spot you have to work on it, but I have had the experience where you finish work, you get on the bus and you break down.”
SINCE HE WAS A TEENAGER HE KNEW THAT HE WANTED TO BE A CRIMINALIST
Alejandro Pando Márquez, a field criminalistics expert, has been working there since 2010 and, according to him, knew he wanted to get a degree in criminology since he was in high school.
“I had the urge to study this. At that time, there was only one school and it was very expensive and a bit complicated, but thank God, He gave me the opportunity to study it and then work as a forensic scientist,” he said.
The functions it performs include the processing of scenes or facts that could be criminal events.
“We are an auxiliary science of criminal law that is responsible for the study of sensitive and significant material, which provides the judge with the necessary evidence to clarify an alleged criminal act.”
For “Pando” his work is very important and like Jesus, he feels that he contributes in some way to society.
“Yes, I like my job and what we do, whether it is robbery, homicide, sexual abuse. It is very gratifying when we see that they are linked to proceedings or that someone has been sentenced in which we had a role. It really draws our attention and leaves a mark on us because we know that the work we do is essential for this situation to occur in this way.”
The facts that impact him the most are those that also have to do with girls and boys.
“When you see children, it really moves you… this job is also risky, because you do get to the point where you feel afraid that someone is going to attack you after an event.”
Pando describes his work as something that requires a lot of commitment and a lot of responsibility.
CONTRIBUTE TO JUSTICE
For Maritsa Parra Peña, a criminal expert assigned to the Directorate of Forensic Services, it is very important to contribute to justice and take a case to court.
His job, like that of Jesús and Pando, consists of processing the scenes of any place where a crime has been committed.
“We deal with cases of homicide, suicide, kidnapping, robbery, rape, incidents where there may have been some physical and/or biological evidence that we can collect in some way to find the alleged perpetrator of the crime,” he explained.
For her, working in the field of forensics is very fascinating and, in her words, every day is different.
“I like that, that it is never the same and what gives you that extra is when you take a case to court and corroborate everything you did at the crime scene, that is, the report and the preliminary hypotheses that you use until you reach a conclusion.”
For her, it is essential to contribute to justice in order to achieve social peace, as well as to be able to determine and comply with the legal norms that are established.
“Many times people take you as the one who picks up the dead and not as the forensic expert and that goes beyond that, I gather evidence to be able to determine the sequence that led to the commission of a crime; I don’t pick up the dead, I pick up shell casings, I pick up blood, I pick up cells. The forensic expert is the one who takes the corpse,” he said.
Maritsa has always sought to do her job with empathy and responsibility, and although it is something she is passionate about, there are still challenges, such as security.
“In terms of security it is difficult (not because I do something wrong), but because we do not know how organized crime will act, we do not know how we will encounter them… for example, I do not know if I am processing a scene and when I return there are the same people who committed that crime, seeing that it is me and that I found something that perhaps they did not want to come to light,” he said.
When asked to describe her job in one word, she said: “gratitude.”
“Thank you, it is absolutely fascinating to work with different crimes and it is very fascinating when someone comes along and recognises you and thanks you, for example when we find bone remains and someone comes along and says: “thanks to you we now know that my dad is dead”. Being thanked for locating people who were missing is very nice, very gratifying and makes me want to be better,” he concluded.
The primary objective of the Field Criminalistics expert is the scientific preservation of the place where the crime was found and the place where the crime occurred, the preservation, photographic recording, collection, packaging and transfer of the clues and evidence to the forensic laboratories and the analysis of the possible mechanics of the events.
[email protected]
#Gallery #daily #life #criminal #expert
