Forensic Technician

Access: Security, Crime Lab, Morgue, Maintenance Difficulty: Hard Qualifications: At least 25 years of age, applicable Criminal Forensics degree or 7 years experience in Criminal Forensics/Investigation. Supervisors: Head of Security Duties: Investigate crime scenes, record evidence, perform autopsies. Guides: Guide to Security, Corporate Regulations, Guide to Forensics

The Forensic Technician's job is to investigate the remains of any crime, use evidence to identify the perpetrator, and then ask Security to arrest them for you. They have limited brig access because they are supposed to be an investigator, not a Security Officer or Warden. They are expected to work in tandem with the Detective - they handle physical evidence, while the detective interrogates witnesses and suspects.

Step one. ALWAYS WEAR YOUR GLOVES. Acquire waistcoat and sunglasses. You are not an officer, so you do not need to adhere to their uniform expectations. Find a lighter and a pack of smokes and have them at the ready, to add extra cool during panic situations. Outclass everyone on the station that isn't equipped with a top hat and cane. BONUS TIP: Grab one of the Heavy Duty Flashlights before the Red Tide does. You can put it on your belt slot.

Now that you look like the distinguished nerd you are, get acquainted with your lab. You will spend half your time here, when you aren't running from break in to murder to poisoning to autopsy. This is where the magic happens. See all the things on the tables around you? Grab all the things. Put them into your free CSI kit. It's the gray box on the rack. It has two layers of storage and can fit everything you need to fulfill your investigations. Do NOT lose it. If anyone steals it, you become useless and should space yourself in shame. If you arrive and your lab is already empty, find the Detective or Head of Security and find out where your stuff is.

Now that you have all the things, your CSI Kit should look like this. Note that you can put boxes inside it, so you can carry around boxes of evidence bags and swab kits with you. You could also take the microscope slides out of the box and repurpose the box for storing field evidence for whatever active case you're running. Makes it easier to keep track of what evidence is relevant to which investigation. You also have Morgue access, so feel free to run on down and grab a body bag. You'll probably need it.

• Crime Scene Kit - Your trusty suitcase, which you can use to haul around all of your forensics junk.
• Fingerprint Powder & Fingerprint Card - One of your primary tools. Use the powder on doors, weapons, clothes, or generally anything you suspect that has been touched by a criminal. If anyone has touched what you powder, you'll get a fingerprint card.
• Fiber Collection Kit - One of your primary tools, but secondary to finding prints due to the interchangeability of clothing. Mostly used as supporting evidence in the case of partial prints that incriminate multiple people. Use it on doors, weapons, clothes, anything you suspect that has been touched by a criminal. If anyone has touched what you use it on, you'll get a bag of fibers.
• UV Goggles & Luminol - The goggles currently do nothing, though they probably should/will do one day. The Luminol spray will reveal any blood that may have been sprayed away. You only get a limited amount of it per shift, though, so bother Chemistry for more before you need it.
• Reagent Scanner & Syringe - Use the reagent scanner on any food or drink that's offered to you, before consuming it. Scan EVERYTHING that comes out of Chemistry, the Kitchen and the Bar. You'll analyze the chemical components of whatever applicable item you scan and each present chemical will be listed. Science can make Advanced Reagent Scanners that will show you the exact concentrations of each chemical in the mix, but the standard version does not provide this information. You can use the Syringe to take a blood sample from someone you suspect to have consumed either drugs or poison, and then analyze it for confirmation.
• Police Tape - When you arrive at a crime scene you should use this to tape off every possible entryway and prevent contamination of potential evidence. Throw out anyone who cuts the tape. Try not to completely block off a main hallway, unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then try to do your investigation and call in a janitor quickly.
• Camera - Useful to carry around with you. Considering you are not equipped with the offensive and defensive tools that an Officer has, you take an incriminating picture if the opportunity presents itself and then swiftly run the hell away.
• Recorder - Useful in case you need to perform an interview, or turn it on in secret and try to goad someone into incriminating themself with their own words.
• Box of Swab Kits - When there's a blood trail on the floor, and no body in sight, wipe the blood with one of these to take a DNA sample. You can also swab bloody weapons, bloody clothes, or people's mouths.
• Box of Evidence Bags - Anything with blood on it, or that looks out of place at a crime scene, needs to be bagged before anyone else can touch it.
• Labeler - Slap labels on those nameless evidence bags unless you want to forget which bloody weapon was from what crime scene in relevance to what investigation. You can harass cargo for some empty boxes, label them accordingly and stash anything relevant in there.

First, cordon off the area with the supplied police tape to ensure the crime scene isn't further contaminated by passerby's. Rest assured that many of the crew will try to involve themselves if the crime scene is in a public area. Some may even disregard the presence of your tape and walk right through a crime-scene, so if it's in a populated area try calling for an Officer to assist you in keeping the crime-scene from interference. Remember to wear your gloves so you don't contaminate evidence yourself.

Once the crime scene is properly taped off and free of loitering assistants, you can begin getting to work. Start by getting pictures of the location of the body, and any other suspicious items. Then, use your swab kit to sample blood if any is present at the scene. Then, begin collecting evidence and putting it in bags with your gloves on. Use your judgement as to what constitutes evidence or not. Bloodied knife? Evidence. Bag of chips? Probably not evidence if it was discarded in a main hallway, definitely evidence if found in a place it has no regular business being.

Make sure to lift the crime scene as soon as possible, so that medical can try to clone the victim in a timely fashion and put their body in the morgue.

Take the blood samples to the DNA Analyzer to get them checked for DNA. Remember to close the lid after a sample is loaded, and open it again after ejecting it so you can get your next sample in. The analyzer can process one sample at a time, and will take a minute or so to produce its analysis. Once you have your results, you can compare your DNA strings to those stored in the medical records (which you can access in your office). If your victim has been disfigured or is otherwise impossible to identify, this is also your chance to put a proper ID on them.

Next, it's time to search for fibers and prints. You lift both of these from evidence using the Fiber Collection Kit and Fingerprint Powder respectively, and analyze them by putting them in your Electron Microscope. If you're lucky, the culprit might've handled valuable evidence (such as the murder weapon) without gloves, but if not you might always have a few fibers to go off on. Remember that for fibers, you need to transfer them to a microscope slide before before you can put them under your microscope (thankfully, each slide is reusable).

At this point, you more often than not have enough evidence to get security to bring it at least one major suspect, if not arrest them outright. Make sure to communicate your findings over the security radio, so sec can be on the lookout for suspects and send them over for the Detective to interrogate.

After medical has processed and relocated the body, it should be found on the autopsy table in the Morgue. If it's not, don't worry - it might just have already been placed in one of the morgue trays. If the body's not in the morgue at all, go beat on the nurses' heads until they get it to you.

To perform an autopsy, you're going to need a scalpel, autopsy scanner, a mask, and a pair of gloves. Make sure to put on the mask and gloves before you begin, to avoid contaminating the body or catching any viral pathogens it might still be carrying.

Then, use a health analyser to find out damage areas on the victim, and use the scalpel on every affected zone once (two cuts for the chest might be necessary). Make sure to scan every zone with the autopsy scanner, and get a printout when you're done. Voila, you have a list of every injury on the body, complete with precise time and responsible weapon. Make sure to communicate your findings with security over the security radio.

Lastly, one additional thing you can do if you can't find any evidence pointing to a cause of death on the body is to perform a reagents test. To do this, grab a syringe, get a blood sample from the body, and put it through the mass-spectrometer found in the morgue. The mass-spectrometer should give you an accurate reading of any chemicals that were present in the victim's body at the time of death. (Note: this can also be used on living victims if you believe they've been drugged.)

ONLY PERFORM AUTOPSIES AFTER A CLONING ATTEMPT ON THE BODY HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE. It's not fun to sit around for 30 minutes waiting to be cloned because the forensic tech decided to check your stomach's contents for the last donk-pocket you ate.

Your options for overt conflict might be more limited than the Detective's seeing as you don't have a gun. However, you're equally capable of fabricating and falsifying evidence. Furthermore, you have prime access to the station's morgue, which can be very useful for disposing of, or obtaining corpses, and generally people will be less suspicious of you if you carry around weapons or dangerous chemicals. As a whole, be creative! Frame others for your own crimes! Induce utter confusion in the station!