- Author
- Factory Mutual Research Corporation
- Title
- Investigation Into Cases of Arson.
- Coporate
- Factory Mutual Research Corp., Norwood, MA
- Journal
- MAPFRE SEGURIDAD, Vol. 15, No. 3rd Quarter, 51-54, 1984
- Keywords
- arson | fire investigations | surveys | eye witness timony | fire investigators
- Abstract
- The U. S. Department of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) belonging to the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, carried out a survey on cases of arson in the 435 cities in the United States with populaitons of 50,000 or over. The survey enquired into whether the inspectors had been trained in the following areas: cause of the fire, eye-witnesses, use of a forensic laboratory, arrests, charges, investigation of the crime location, testifications in court, and federal, state and local laws regualtions. The use of a forensic laboratory was one of the questions most often omitted. The cause for this omission is the scarcity of economic resources, according to Dr. Camp (Director of the Forensic Department of Cambridge Analytical Associates, Inc. in Watertown, Massachusetts) when asked by the magazine Record. Besides the equipment needed, training of the inspection force is also fundamental, sinced at times personnel are recruited from fire departments, where they have had a great deal of fire-fighting experience but haved done very little scientific research work. The main equipment available in a laboratory should be hydrocarbon detectors, apparatus for determining the point of ignition, gas chromatographic apparatus and other more complex instruments for infra-red spectro-photometry and mass spectro-photometry. The laboratory should be capable of providing the inspector with the best legal evidence possible. Bearing in mind what Dr. Camp said: "the analysis laboratory is only as good as the evidence available"; gathering evidence therefore should be the inspector's most important task. Future training programes should stress this point, and also advise the fire departments to install computers and use tham in order to offer an essential panorama of information to the forensic laboratories. The results of the survey of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administraion showed a small increase of arrests for proven arson and suspicious fires and it is to be hoped that, with the establishment of work teams, activity programes and educational programes for arson inspectors, the rate of improvement will increase.