Forensic consultant helping students to solve mock crime

From fingerprinting to the examination of blood spatters, Laing Middle School forensic students are learning the skills they need to eventually solve a true ... well, mock ... crime.

In the middle school course, which is part of the school's new curriculum as a science and technology magnet, forensic students are learning the scientific method by searching for the same clues a crime investigator would.

Most recently, Jeff Parrott, a former State Law Enforcement Division crime-scene investigator and a forensic consultant, told the class that sifting through the evidence found at a crime scene typically takes hours.

As in a scientific experiment, investigators use objective observation. They take notes on what they see, hear, smell and sometimes sketch what they see, he said.

In most cases, they look for the unusual: a toilet seat left up in a house of women or a cigarette butt on the floor of a nonsmoker's home, Parrott said.

Evidence ranges from the large, maybe a car, to the infinitesimal, a hair follicle or a string of thread.

Teacher Christina Kleindt said Parrott is one of many speakers who will visit her forensic classes.

"There is a textbook," Kleindt said. "But this is not a textbook class."

By the end of the course, students will use their training to solve a crime and Kleindt also may discuss how that evidence would face scrutiny in a court of law.

Parrott of Columbia told students that he had been in law enforcement for 17 years and knew early on what direction he wanted to take after working his first homicide as a deputy sheriff in Newberry County in 1992.

He was just three months into the job when a supervisor handed him a notebook at the scene of a shooting and asked Parrott to sketch the crime scene.

Something just clicked he said.

"From then on, I realized what I wanted to do," he said.

He continued working as a deputy and took forensic science training at night before moving to the Columbia Police Department and becoming a crime-scene investigator with the State Law Enforcement Division in 2000.

Parrott opened his own consulting businesses after leaving SLED in February. At the helm of his new company, Forensic Consulting and Training Services, Parrott offers forensic training to law enforcement agencies, testimony as an expert witness and seminars to groups like the audience he found at Laing Middle School.

Parrott told students that technology in the field of forensics changes rapidly. Ballistics experts, for example, can now aim lasers at bullet holes and pinpoint the exact location of a shooter. There is always something new to learn and the field is multifaceted, he said.

Parrott said, "The potential is endless."

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.