Homicide Scenes: Information for Writers with Sgt. Derek Pacifico

Fiona - Good morning - have you had your coffee?

Sgt. Pacifico - Yes, I have it right here as a matter of fact. Just got
      my drum workout in and feeling relaxed now.

Fiona - Drum workout? LOL It seems a little early in the morning...

     hopefully everyone at your house was already up. What do you

     play?

Sgt. Pacifico - It's a great stress reliever. I love to play to

     Genesis and other 60's, 70's rock groups. Pink Floyd, Rush those

     kinds.

Fiona - So I've found you relaxed and about to be caffeinated - then

      I should take advantage. Let's start with who you are and why

      I'm so thrilled to have you and your expertise here today.

Sgt. Pacifico - My background is patrol

     and my specialty in homicide 

    - and later as a trainer as well. 

     My forte is being an interrogator. 

     That's where I'm most 

     knowledgeable, 

     and it is a favorite topic. I just loved

     working that detail. The most

     important work I ever did.

Fiona - How is the process at a homicide different than arriving at

      the scene of any other violent crime. What's the mood? What's

      the mind set...

Sgt. Pacifico - The major difference is that when it is a homicide,

      everything slows down. There isn't any rush. The violence

      is over, now it's time to be very detail oriented in getting all the

      evidence we can. In every crime where the victim lives, they

      can at least tell us something about what happened prior to the

      violence. In a murder, we often don't know who our dead guy

      is, why he is there, why this happened, and who is involved.

      Depending on the nature of the scene or the body, sometimes

      we don't even know why they are dead until the autopsy.

      The mindset is always that we know we are playing for all the

      marbles. A doper is going to buy/sell/produce more dope if he

      gets off on some blunder we made in the case. The suspect is

      only going to kill his neighbor once. We have to get it right. 

      Sometimes that means staying at scenes for days.

Police car emergency lighting fixtures switched on. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fiona - How much does

      money have to do with

      finding the right

      bad-guy sending him to
      to jail? Do more
      affluent departments
      have a better chance?

Sgt. Pacifico - The better
      the budget, the more

      resources there are to

      spend on personnel, physical resources, crime lab and

      equipment, outside testing etc. But the funny part about

      money that most people get wrong is that the rich don't get

      better service or more of our time and the poor victim gets

      nothing, within the same agency jurisdiction. What I mean is

      this, usually a more affluent person who winds up dead is going

      to have people willing to be involved to help us - be that family,

      friends, or co-workers. The suspect is usually easily figured out

      from their lifestyle and usually they're not career criminals or

      have that mindset. Whereas a poor gang banger's murder is far

      harder to investigate. The amount of hours spent working a gang

      murder is probably (unscientific numbers here) 10 to 1 versus a

      middle or upper class murder. In the case of a gang murder, no

      one wants to talk to us. The witnesses who do finally talk are

      most often other criminals whose credibility is suspect in court.

      Before trial, witnesses often get killed in unrelated murders -

      not specially in retaliation for testifying in the 

      pre-preliminary hearing, and so on and so forth. The work on a

      bangers murder case can take years to get to trial. The middle

      class guy who kills his co-worker in a love triangle for example,

      that one may be solved in a week or two and prosecuted within

      a year's time.

Fiona - You mentioned the behind scene politics and emotions -

      basically the humanity of the investigator - can you explain
      this? I'm particularly interested in coping mechanisms at the
      moment of confronting the scene - but also later when alone
      with one's thoughts.

Sgt. Pacifico - I will say that after my first autopsy, I wasn't able to
      eat chicken on the bone for about six months. After a while
      though, I had to just get over the sights and references and
      realize that it probably bothers everyone a little at first, but you
      just have to accept seeing damaged bodies as part of the job. 

     I have a friend from high school who became a doctor and

     worked trauma for a couple years. He told me he coped with

     what he saw by remembering it was his job; people were relying

     on him. Because it was not his family or friend, it was easy to

     put aside the emotions and get the job done. He was right, and it

     helped. He said he isn't necessarily as calm about injuries when

     it's his direct family and he is in daddy-mode instead of doctor-

     mode. 

     I think that our intense academy training style helps too. You

     learn very early on - or you don't make it - that you have to push

     through stressful situations and do the job properly or people

     who depend on you could die. Now in homicides, the

     investigation isn't of that same nature, but you realize that

     although there are stresses, you can handle it, including the

     emotions and seeing the bad stuff. 

     Now here is a little secret - television and movies on average 

     are more gross than real life. For instance, a man shot a couple 

     times in the chest with a pistol round with one bullet piercing

     the heart will not bleed very much for two reasons. One, the

     pump that causes bleeding is broken, and isn't causing

     circulation. Then, due to lack of circulation, they fall down and

     die. There is no more bleeding. There could be some seepage,

     but a man wearing a shirt and especially a hoodie or jacket who

     is shot in the chest may hardly bleed (externally) at all. He just

     falls down dead. In the movies, they have huge exit wounds and

     gross wounds that most times, on average, victim's don't

     experience in real life. 

     Now knife wounds are a different story. There is so much

     damage done during a knife fight before the victim actually

     dies that there is a tremendous amount of blood loss. Those

     scenes can be quite icky.

Fiona - I adore that you used the word "Icky." You read it here

     folks - gun scenes are clean if you need gore go for the knife.

     One of my readers once asked me what happens at a crime

     scene in terms of housekeeping. Say there's a homicide and

     someone broke in - does the police secure the house - board up

     the window or door? What about the pets? How do you go about

     finding the other residents to let them know what's going on - or

     next of kin?

Sgt. Pacifico - We the police don't get involved in any clean up. It's

     actually a bio-hazard scene and needs to be done properly. 

     There are a few different companies that do crime scene clean

     up. We provide that information to whomever is now

     responsible for the property and advise them to use a service.

     Whether they do or not is entirely up to them. 

      By the time we are done with a scene, we will have identified

      some next of kin or landlord to whom we turn over the 

      property when we are done. That's another thing TV gets wrong.

      We own the scene while we are there. Regardless, we will have

      written a search warrant to conduct
      the investigation. That way

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

      we don't rely on people's

      permission to stay as long

      as we want

      and need. But once we

      are done, the tape comes

      down, and we

      leave. It doesn't remain a

      crime scene after we are

      gone. If we are going to

      be there multiple days and

      therefore need to get

      away and sleep, we maintain
      security of the place by having a

      uniformed police officer stand guard while we grab some zzz's

      in our detective unit. Usually two hour naps, coupled with 

      gallons of coffee can get us back on track until sun up. 

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

      Pets are

      immediately removed

      from the scene. If

      neighbors will take them

      for us, great. If there are

      no neighbors, or the

      animals are dangerous,

      we have animal control

      pick them up and hold

      them for next of kin. 

     In today's electronic age, it doesn't
     take long for next of kin to

     find out what we are doing. Often they show up earlier than we'd

     like. Sometimes they are problematic. They want to go in the

     house and touch the body, and we don't want any contamination

     and only get one shot at doing a pristine scene. It's a difficult

     balancing act for the family who wants to know what happened

     and us telling them what we can without compromising the case

Fiona - Let's talk about a project your are working on that will

      benefit writers - the Writers Homicide School. How did that

      come about?

      I retired in June, 2012 after 22 years on the San Bernardino

      County Sheriff's Department in Southern California. Years ago

      when I was in homicide, I came to Knoxville, Tennessee to pick

      up a suspect and bring him back to California. I fell immediately

      in love with the geography and culture of East Tennessee. 

      I made my wife come back with me on a vacation, and she was

      instantly hooked. I retired early in order to leave California and

      finish raising my kids out here in East Tennessee where I live

      now. 

     In my work as an officer, at

     an early age, my supervisors

     apparently saw something in

     me regarding my ability to

     train and teach. I was brought
     into the ranks of the Field

     Training Officers and also

     tasked with creating and

     developing course material
     and teaching it at our academy for

     both basic recruit academy and also the advanced officer

     training.

     I never had any thoughts or intentions about having a training 

     company or doing consulting, but it just sort of happened while

     I was still a detective. I was invited by outside agencies to come

     out on their budget and teach my courses that had garnered so

     much popularity in my department. One day, I realized I could

     make a business of this. 

      When I was in homicide, because of my training development

      background, I was asked to develop an advanced homicide

      school. I created a two-week interactive school and set it in

      motion with several other instructors. It gained huge popularity

      and quickly became a favorite class for many professionals

      because of our very fun and interactive method of delivering

      the information. Part of being in homicide, or on the

      department, is being asked to speak or guest lecture to

      organizations. We had a 45 minute homicide for public

      groups PowerPoint that we often delivered to Kiwanis, Rotary

      and those types of groups. 

      One day I was invited to speak to the Sisters in Crime in

      Pasadena. I gave them the public lecture, and they loved it.

      From that I was invited to several other conferences to speak

      and eventually wound up at CBS studios speaking to a screen

      writers group. Some writers had seen me in several of these

      talks and had cornered me, refusing to let me go until I

      promised to put on a full seminar of no less than two days worth

      of material geared to writers. From that, CRIME WRITERS

      CONSULTATIONS was born.

      This continued with me developing what is now the WRITERS

      HOMICIDE SCHOOL, a two-day seminar that brings writers

      from the hiring process through being a detective in homicide

      and learning a little about all of the aspects of how to do the job,

      but even more so what goes on behind the scenes. Politics,

      frustrations, laughter, sadness and all the stuff no one ever sees.

      Writers get to ask all the questions they can fit in during the 

      seminar, and its great for character and scene development.

Fiona - I always ask this same question in all of my interviews - 

     please tell me the story behind your favorite scar. Interestingly,

     I have found all of my interviews with people who live a "do-or-

     die" lifestyle, they rarely have a scar story. At cocktail parties, 

     I have brought this up as a topic and my favorite theory is that

     should you be one of the people who would get scars, then

     you're not going to last very long on the job - sort of a survival

     of the fittest theory if you will. So if you have no scar then

     maybe just a harrowing close call...

. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sgt. Pacifico - I've broken
      the bones in my right
      hand twice. Don't punch

      people in the skull.

      Typically the skull is

      tougher than
      metacarpals. 

     The first time, I was on

     patrol working graveyard, 
     11p.m. - 7a.m. Around 1 a.m. on this

     warm summer night, I was patrolling the business area abutting

     up to a residential area. I was on the main thoroughfare driving

     pretty slowly when I heard a man shouting unintelligibly. 

     I finally figured out it was coming from the corner convenience

     store where there was some guy standing at the payphone

     shouting at it. He was out of his mind on drugs. He had the

     phone cradle in his right hand and was beating the keypad, 

     each time yelling a random number. Bam! "Six!" Bam!

     "Threeee!" When I approached him and tried to speak gently

     to him, he turned on me and the fight was on. Another deputy

     had already arrived for the approach, and we tackled him. He

     grabbed my inside thigh and started twisting my skin and

     muscles. It hurt like hell, so I punched him a couple times in the

     head. It got him to let go, and we were able to cuff him. After

     the adrenaline wore off, my hand was throbbing, and I went to

     the local ER where X-rays showed a fracture. Bummer was that

     I had to work the front desk for six weeks!

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