When police Officer Darren Wilson left the Ferguson, Mo., scene of the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, he returned to the police station unescorted, washed blood off his hands and placed his recently fired pistol into an evidence bag himself.
Those actions, described in grand jury testimony, violated protocols for how to handle a crime scene and secure evidence, according to experts in policing procedures and Justice Department documents.
Wilson’s movements after the shooting were among a number of police actions in the aftermath of Brown’s death that experts said were unusual.
The grand jury transcripts revealed, for example, that officers who interviewed Wilson immediately after the shooting did not tape the conversations.
They also showed that an investigator from the medical examiner’s office opted not to take measurements at the crime scene and arrived there thinking that what happened between Brown and Wilson was “self-explanatory.”
It is unclear how these unorthodox practices might have influenced the investigation of a shooting that has triggered a national conversation about race and police practices. The grand jury’s decision Monday not to indict Wilson in connection with the shooting death has led to protests nationwide.
Police and forensic officials in Ferguson have not responded to repeated requests for comment over a two-day period.
In the critical first minutes after a shooting, investigators are trained to follow a time-tested process of protecting the scene to ensure evidence is not compromised, according to the experts and documents. A shooting suspect — even a police officer — must be cordoned off in a controlled area and stripped of his clothing, his weapon secured by investigators, and escorted by other officers if he leaves.
“An officer driving himself back? Wrong. An officer booking his own gun into evidence? Wrong,” said David Klinger, an expert on police shootings at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a former police officer. “The appropriate investigative procedures were not followed.”
A 2013 Justice Department manual on processing crime scenes, designed in conjunction with local police departments across the country, addresses what experts said was perhaps the most serious breach of proper protocol after Brown was killed: Wilson washing the blood off his hands.
In a phrase underlined for emphasis, the manual says, “Do not allow suspect to use bathroom facilities, or to alter his/her appearance, including brushing hair or washing hands.”
The manual spells out in detail how to handle evidence and adhere to what is known as the chain of custody, a meticulous preservation of evidence until it is presented in court. Among the most important aspects, the manual said: securing the crime scene with “minimal contamination,” confiscating the weapon; and collecting the suspect’s clothing while keeping him in a controlled location on scene.
Chuck Drago, a former Florida police chief who now runs a consulting firm on police practices, described Wilson’s actions in the aftermath of the shooting — especially washing the blood of his hands and handling his own gun — as “totally unorthodox and unusual. This would be considered very out of line, very, very bad from an investigative perspective.”
Drago said investigators are supposed to immediately seize a suspect’s weapon, even that of an officer, and not allow him to clean himself up.
“They need to make sure he doesn’t wipe off any evidence, destroy any evidence or who knows what,” he said.
Drago added that failing to tape Wilson’s interviews with investigators and not taking measurements at the crime scene are also very unusual. The FBI had a controversial policy for years of not taping witness interviews, but Drago said most police departments have been doing it for at least two decades.
Mike Zopf, a lawyer and former police training specialist at the University of Illinois, said Wilson might not have followed proper procedure because it was the first time he had fired his weapon.
“There may have been a little bit of shock going on,” Zopf said.
“Even in the most justifiable shooting, there’s a trauma that’s unfamiliar to the human brain.”
A lawyer who was part of the team representing Wilson, Jim Towey, said that his client was being careful under the circumstances, taking care to package his weapon in an evidence bag and washing off blood, which was getting sticky and uncomfortable.
“He drove himself back to the station because other (officers) were going to the scene. He realized that he had blood on him. It was getting sticky, and it was gross. And he didn’t know if it was his or Brown’s,” Towey said. He added, “He immediately packaged his weapon from his possession. He did it himself because there was no one back at the station to do it for him, to the best of my recollection.”
He said that although the first statement from Wilson was not taped, subsequent ones were put in writing and later taped.
The grand jury transcripts also described actions by others in law enforcement that experts considered unusual.
An investigator with the St. Louis County medical examiner’s office testified that he didn’t take measurements because when he arrived, ” it was self-explanatory what happened. Somebody shot somebody. There was no question as to any distances or anything of that nature at the time I was there.”
According to the transcripts, the investigator, who was not named but was described as a 25-year veteran, did not take his own photographs at the scene of the shooting because, he said, his camera battery was dead. Instead, he relied on photographs shot by the St. Louis County Police Department.
Prosecutors questioned police procedures on a couple of occasions, including the decisions by Ferguson and St. Louis County investigators not to tape their interviews with the officer after the shooting.
Why not tape these answers? A detective with St. Louis County was asked. “It is just common practice that we do not,” the detective said.
