BGA was invited to the New York Police Department (NYPD) to present the Crime Scene Reconstruction Level I course last week. Participants included both detectives and various criminalists from the NYPD crime laboratory.

One of the most interesting challenges in the course is the Day Four practical, which requires student groups to determine the actions and order of actions in a double homicide, as well as answering two specific investigative questions.

These questions are not easily answered and require significant thought and logic on the part of the group. One particular question requires sequencing the order of introduction of four weapons used in the incident. Over the number of years BGA has presented the course, we’ve seen excellent efforts to resolve this issue. Yet, the question has always required a number of specific tests to resolve, and in fact it has never been resolved in less than five tests. One of the groups at NYPD developed an excellent resolution with only three tests. This was something we were somewhat surprised to see and initially questioned closely, yet we found no logic errors in the argument. So we want to congratulate the group (Criminalist Melissa Huyck, Criminalist Kate Ferrante, Detective Billy Brown, Criminalist Cristina Pires and Criminalist Manager Stacey Butler) on this tremendous effort.