PPE

At near enough every crime scene it is vital that the scenes of crime officers working at the scene are wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as wearing the equipment they must also make sure that the gear that they are wearing is suitable for the scene that they are going to examine. Some examples of personal protection equipment would be a body suit, eye wear, face mask, gloves and shoe covers. PPE is used for two main reasons, the first is to protect the scene from being contaminated by the scenes of crime officers and the second is to protect the scenes of crime officers from the scene itself. There are many ways in which a scenes of crime officer can contaminate a scene which is why certain pieces of equipment must be worn to prevent contamination from occurring, for example, show covers must be worn when walking around in the scene to make sure that shoe prints do not contaminate the scene or harm any evidence found on the floor, as well as gloves so that the fingerprints of the officers do not make their way onto the evidence. Some scenes can also be a danger which means that SOCO's need to wear the correct gear to keep them safe when examining a scene, for example if there are sharp objects or corrosive fluids at a scene then eye wear must be worn for protection, same goes for hand protection, if there is anything at the scene that is harmful to skin and must be handled then gloves must be worn.

OJ Simpson

In the OJ Simpson case where he allegedly killed Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman the scenes of crime officers played a large part in how the investigation played out and a lot of blame was put on them for OJ Simpson being acquitted of the murders. The scenes of crime officers had one role in the OJ Simpson case which was to go to the scene where the crime took place so that they could collect any evidence their that was relevant to the case, once they collected the evidence they had to correctly label and tag each piece of evidence, then the evidence could be sent for further analysis. In reality, what really happened was a disaster, the SOCO team did not wear the correct PPE which resulted in a lot of evidence being contaminated. As well as the SOCO team the police officers who visited the scene at the time (who should not have been allowed into the scene) were not told to wear PPE such as shoe covers and gloves when in the crime scene and looking at evidence, this resulted in a lot of evidence located on the floor being stood on or contaminated by shoe prints as well as some evidence that was handled by the police which in result got contaminated.