Preliminary Investigation

The preliminary investigation tends to be carried out immediately after the initial response, it is essential for this stage to be carried out in this order. This is because it is considered a step forward from the initial response as in this stage the law enforcement will expand upon any information they originally have from the initial response. This includes identifying any suspects that may be involved in the crime and whether or not there is a sufficient amount of evidence to initiate any action that can be taken. (The procedure of the preliminary investigation will differ depending upon what crime has been committed therefore they have to take into account if there is a crime scene, if there are any victims, is there any evidence or any witnesses?).

Within the preliminary investigation if there is any evidence it is collected and bagged up to allow further analyst at the laboratory and to prevent any possible contamination which may occur from a change in weather conditions or by individuals who attend the scene. The investigators will identify any witnesses that where at the crime scene, that may be of help with the investigation. If there are any witnesses the officials will proceed to interview them as soon as possible, this is because if they decide to wait several days before interviewing a potential key witness their version of events may be muddled, therefore they will not give an accurate representation of what they saw.

Referring back to the Paul Morin case the preliminary investigation was conducted immediately. However originally the police department did not consider kidnapping, as it was a very small neighbourhood and they thought it would be extremely hard to kidnap a child without a witness. However once seven hours passed, numerous amount of police cars, emergency vehicles and 17 police officers were at the house of Christine Jessop. Officers at Jessop’s house did not corner anything off, in fact citizens from the neighbourhood were allowed to enter the house to comfort the family. Therefore the house was being contaminated with citizen’s fingerprints and a log wasn’t kept identifying who had been in the house.  It could be suggested that due to the police officers not conducting a search or analysing the house where Christine last was, led to the wrongful conviction of Paul Morn and essentially is the reason they have still not found who committed the crime.

Within the preliminary investigation the police officers failed to do a house-to-house search but instead only choose to look at houses near Christine Jessop. Detectives then turned up at Paul Morin’s house and interviewed his Mother, and identified that Morin acted suspiciously. The next day evidence was collected from Morin’s car, which included hair fibres.

Inspector Robert Brown initiated an immediate ground search at the site where the body was found to see if there was any potential evidence. It was conducted immediately as a storm was predicted later on that day, therefore the change in weather conditions may contaminate any potential evidence, which may have led to an unsuccessful investigation.