Guide to Forensics/bay12

Handling evidence

It's quite simple. If you touch something - you get stuff on it. Fingerprints if you didn't even bother to wear gloves, fibers if you're wearing clothes (please do), or blood if you're a blood-drenched axe murderer. If that's not what you want, use Evidence Bags to put things in for safe handling, and cordon crime scenes to prevent pesky onlookers from contaminating it.

Types of evidence

Fingerprints

Most straightforward thing - people have fingers, and fingers have very specific patters on the tips. And since they tend to leave greasy imprints of them everywhere, these can be used to find out who touched what.

Problem with these is that more often than not people only leave a fragment of whole print, so you'd need to collect enough of those before you can with any degree conclude what the actual print is.

Upside is that once you got past that, it's a matter of simple search in Security Records to connect the name to the print. Assuming no one tampered with those of course...

Fibers

Less telling, but much more often encountered cousin of fingerprints. What happens is whenever you touch something, tiny bits of fabric from your clothing might fall off and stick to the items. It's nearly impossible to prevent it aside from not wearing any clothes (but then you'd have to worry about fingerprints) or wearing fullbody sealed suit (suit would still leave fibers).

You will encounter these most often, but the problem with them is that unless you're very lucky, they only help to lessen the number of suspects, as many jobs on station wear same uniform and there is no way to tell the specific one that left this fiber.

Gunshot Residue (GSR)

Guns are messy. Their results are messy, and their workings are messy. When gun fires, it creates a cloud of tiny burnt-up particles, that stick to just about everything - especially your hands. By swabbing hands (or gloves) for said residue, you can find out if owner of said gloves (or hands) fired a gun recently, and even what type of bullet it was.

DNA samples

Nature was kind enough to make your job easier by sticking an unique identifier on all bits of humans - DNA. In this line of work, you'll find it in body liquids - swabs of either blood or saliva from (unidentified) victim's mouth if you need it.

Tools

You get all kinds of nifty toys to collect those things with, all fitting nicely in a crime scene kit that should be lying somewhere in the lab. Or stick them on your belt if that's your thing.

Evidence bag

Sealable plastic baggie to hold all kinds of nasty (or not) stuff. You should get any evidence in there as soon as possible so people can carry it around with contaminating with fibers or fingerpints. Isn't scannable in any machinery, take item out and use other tools on it.

Luminol & UV light

Fun for rave parties and murder investigations. Luminol is a magical chemical compound that reacts with blood traces that are invisible to naked eye. Spray it where you think blood was supposed to be.

Said reaction makes them visible in UV light (that's what it for) as cool-looking blue glowing stains. That is, of course, if the culprit didn't clean thoroughly enough.

Fingerprint powder

Aluminium powder and a brushie. Let's you collect those pesky fingerprint fragments off various surfaces. Just use it on anything you need, and if there's any kind of prints there, fingerprint card will appear.

Fingerprint cards

Nice and white plastic cards with malleable layer, used to hold full set of fingerprints. Click in hand or aim at someone else's hands to take nice and complete fingerprints. Analyze in Microscope for details.

Fiber collection kit

Cool magnifying glass for finding small bits of fibers, and tweezers for picking them up. All findings go into tiny baggies. Can be used to get fibers off pretty much anything - just click on thing and if there are some fibers on it, they'll appear. Analyze in Microscope for details.

Swab kit

Cotton swab and and airtight vial. Used to get all kinds of sticky liquid (or powdered) stuff sampled and secured. Can be used to:

• get DNA from saliva - target mouth on mob;
• get blood off something - click on item, select Blood if prompted;
• get GSR off a clothing item - click on item, select Gunshot Residu if prompted;
• get GSR off someone's hands - target hands on mob.

Analyze in Microscope for GSR or DNA Scanner for blood / DNA.

Machinery

Microscope

Advanced machinery for looking really hard at really small things. Stick GSR swabs, fingerprint cards or fibers into it for full analysis. Attack with sample to put it in, empty hand to start scan. Drag machine sprite on yourself to remove sample.

DNA Scanner

Machine for figuring out the DNA of sticky icky things you put in it. Accepts swabs with blood or saliva. Attack with sample to put it in, empty hand to start scan. Drag machine sprite on yourself to remove sample.