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May 14, 2008 11:47 pm US/Eastern
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F.B.I. Gives The Real Scoop On CSI
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
CBS 3 took an inside look at a travelling CSI lab in Philadelphia. It is helping investigators zero in on the bad guys and it recently proved its worth in the murder of Police officer Stephen Liczbinski.
CBS 3's Valerie Levesque was able to take us behind the scenes.
On television it looks so easy. If you want to find out where a bullet came from, just push a button and the trigger man shows up on the screen.
But to the FBI in Philadelphia, they call that 'CSI Syndrome.'
"You just can't do stuff as quickly as they do on TV. What takes five seconds on TV might take weeks in the real world," FBI Special Agent Leah Chambers said.
FBI agents rarely let anyone see their operation. But they recently gave CBS 3 an exclusive look. They showed us their new emergency response unit and they allowed us to suit up and act like special agents for a day.
"There is a situation where there's been a kidnapping. You have a car that has been recovered," FBI Special Agent Michael O'Brien said.
It was our job to collect the evidence like a knife, gun and ransom note.
"There may be some blood or something over here on the side. There may be some kind of liquid," another agent said.
They showed us how to lift prints.
"You just take a small amount of powder. There's probably enough already on the brush just dust it with the flow of the print," one agent said, "You can see right here, we have some definition on that print. It might be hard to see on the camera."
But what is easy to see on camera is what they call a black light.
"Different forms of evidence will react differently to different types of light. Some of it will reflect the light, some of it absorb it," O'Brien said.
It is good old fashion police work here, but with new technology soon it will become more like CSI.
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