DID YOU KNOW….?
In the state of Washington, when a body is found or a person witnesses an assault that turns into a homicide:
1.Patrol is dispatched. When s/he arrives, they determine that the assaulted is now a decedent, or confirm there is a dead person.
2.Once confirmed that there is a dead body, it is either an “attended” or “unattended” death.
3.All “unattendeds” are suspicious. Attendeds can be suspicious, or not suspicious as in the case of expected death/terminally ill/elderly.
4.If it is at all suspicious, the scene is “locked down” or “secured”. This means limiting any and all access to the area that appears to be involved. The police start big because they can’t start over. Sometimes that means a block, a room, a house.
5.The scene is secured with anything handy, but generally with police line tape. The police will tie to anything—poles, trees, cars, fences. (FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE! DON’T STAND STILL!LOL!)
6.A scenario: A shooting is reported. Citizen calls in that an altercation occurred in front of her house, there was a shot, a man slumped to the street. She sees people running away from the scene and then getting into a car. Many other calls come in about the same incident. Some give a description of the getaway car.
All area officers respond unless stuck at jail or on other calls. The radio traffic can be insane on such calls. If the officer en route to the call, and closest to it, sees a possible matching suspect vehicle headed away from the area, that officer has to decide whether to chase the vehicle, or continue to the scene. In order to save life, the officer continues to the scene to render aid, but calls in suspect vehicle so other officers and agencies can pursue it. This is a judgment call whether to pursue or continue to scene to render aid.
First responder, a patrol officer, arrives. Due to the nature of the crime, patrol officer tries to park away from the scene. The officer doesn’t stop talking on the radio while she checks the victim to see if the victim can be saved, she puts up tape, talks to people who are present, secures the evidence and follows procedures, all at the same time!
Officer walks up to the body, sees fresh blood pooling quickly from a gunshot wound to the head, sees brain matter and a skull fragment nearby. Advises Sergeant immediately “This is going to be a callout” ( ‘callout’ is for areas who have detectives off duty in the middle of the night)
Officer advises dispatch to advise Fire (who respond due to the apparent nature of the call: a victim of a shooting)that subject is 10-10(deceased)Fire still responds to confirm the death. When it’s an obvious fatal, only one or two firefighters will step into the crime scene which is now being rapidly secured and isolated which means getting the citizen ‘helpers’ out of the way since they are standing around the body by this time, and isolating witnesses so they don’t confuse what they actually saw versus what they are cross pollinating each other with.
First responding officer secures and isolates scene. The officer marks placement of evidence, sometimes using something as simple as pieces of paper from their notebook and folding the paper to cover any evidence like a bullet casing, bullet, cell phone, key, and so forth. This is a temporary measure until the real evidence team can arrive and start photographing and measuring those things. The body is left where it lies so detectives can gather evidence and examine the position of the body, impact points, and recover evidence, photograph the body and so on.
Once the detectives have adequately documented and recovered evidence, the body is taken by the Medical Examiner’s officer for an autopsy. Detectives attend the autopsy.
When cause of death is determined, the body is released to the family and goes to a funeral home. Delay of release depends on how quickly cause of death is determined. If there are toxicology screens or other lab reports pending the body is kept until they are finished. Usually not long, within a week mostly.

During the writing of my murder mysteries, Dead Men and Cats(available on amazon.com), and Sketch of a Murder COMING IN AUGUST, 2013 I have been fortunate to meet some great law enforcement folks. One such person is SUZANNE EVISTON. Suzanne is not only an officer, but also a K9 handler and trainer for K9 teams. MANY thanks to Officer #SuzanneEviston for her wonderful patience in helping me to understand the procedure that occurs when a homicide is reported. As always, any mistakes are mine.