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Syllabus

Criminal Investigation
LE207

YEAR:

2023-2024

CREDIT HOURS:

3.00

PREREQUISITES:

None

COREQUISITES:

None

COURSE NOTES:

None

CATALOG COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Effective interview and interrogation techniques, crime scene management and lab processes, crime scene documentation methods, case preparation and court presentation.

HutchCC INSTITUTION-WIDE OUTCOMES:

  1. Demonstrate the ability to think critically and make reasonable judgments by acquiring, analyzing, combining, and evaluating information.
  2. Demonstrate the skills necessary to access and manipulate information through various technological and traditional methods.
  3. Demonstrate effective communication through reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
  4. Demonstrate effective interpersonal and collaborative skills.
  5. Demonstrate effective quantitative-reasoning and computational skills.

AREA OR PROGRAM OUTCOMES

  1. Recognize the personal demands required of public safety personnel.
  2. Apply correct legal principles and procedures to ensure justice.
  3. Demonstrate accepted verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills expected of public safety professionals.
  4. Demonstrate the ability to identify possible responses in unique situations and emergency situations and apply appropriate actions.
  5. Recognize accepted ethical, integrity, and professionalism standards expected of public safety personnel.
  6. Develop comprehensive insight into how law enforcement, the courts, and corrections interrelate to form the criminal justice system.

COURSE OUTCOMES AND COMPETENCIES:

  1. Determine criminal investigator characteristics necessary for a fair, complete and impartial investigation.
    1. Explain the impact of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions on the evolution of criminal investigation.
    2. Describe how the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 served as the model for modern policing.
    3. Identify key historical milestones in the field of criminalistics.
    4. Identify the essential qualities of an investigator.
    5. Explain the organization of the investigative process.
    6. Discuss the various types of services needed to adequately process a crime scene.
    7. Identify typical problems associated with crime scenes.
    8. Identify the safety issues which must be considered during the processing of crime scenes.
    9. Describe how you select the proper crime scene search pattern.
    10. Describe what documentation is needed to adequately record your findings at a crime scene.
    11. Compare and contrast still photography to videotaping.
  2. Analyze facts to determine if a crime has been committed.
    1. Differentiate between individual and class characteristic evidence.
    2. Explain how to preserve footwear and tire impressions.
    3. Describe the proper method for determining the direction of force in low-speed and high-speed glass breakage.
    4. Explain the basis of identification of fingerprints.
    5. Describe the various methods for developing and lifting latent fingerprints.
    6. Explain how to process and preserve bite-mark evidence.
    7. Identify presumptive and confirmatory tests for blood.
    8. Describe the proper techniques for collecting firearm evidence.
    9. Discuss how to determine if a documents has been forged.
    10. Identify the objectives of interviewing.
    11. Identify the objectives of interrogation.
    12. Explain how an investigator should prepare for either an interview or interrogation.
    13. Identify some of the difficulties associated with witness interviews.
    14. Explain why eyewitness testimony is generally unreliable.
    15. Describe why investigative hypnosis can be an effective investigative tool.
    16. Explain how the Cognitive Interview can enhance memory retrieval.
    17. Identify the pre-interrogation legal requirements.
    18. Define interrogation.
    19. Define custody.
    20. Explain the guidelines for note taking.
    21. Identify the aids to information gathering for incident reports.
    22. Identify common elements of incident reports.
    23. Explain how to write effective reports.
    24. Describe when you would initiate supplemental reports.
  3. Explain the purpose of each step in the criminal investigative process.
    1. Identify decision models used in determining solvability factors and whether to initiate a follow-up investigation.
    2. Describe the follow-up investigation process.
    3. Explain how the polygraph can aid in a criminal investigation.
    4. Identify the guidelines for conducting photo and live lineups.
    5. Identify the various divisions of the forensic crime laboratory.
    6. Explain the measures used to determine the effectiveness of a crime laboratory.
    7. Describe evidence handling procedures employed within the crime laboratory.
    8. Explain the intelligence/analytical cycle.
    9. Define crime analysis.
    10. Define time-event charting.
    11. Define criminal profiling.
    12. Define Geographic profiling.
    13. Explain why the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime was developed and the ways the center aid local law enforcement.
    14. Explain the origin of NCIC and its modern application.
  4. Demonstrate documentation methods and procedures through the entire investigation process.
    1. Identify and explain the motivational models for classification of homicide.
    2. Differentiate between the medico-legal and traditional autopsies.
    3. Explain the various techniques employed in identifying the dead.
    4. Discuss the procedures which should be followed when searching for buried bodies.
    5. Explain how to estimate the time of death based upon physiological changes.
    6. Define algor mortis.
    7. Define livor mortis.
    8. Define rigor mortis.
    9. Explain when an investigator may find an individual exhibiting a cadaveric spasm.
    10. Contrast gunshot wounds based on distance determination.
    11. Differentiate between the medico-legal findings associated with blunt force versus sharp force.
    12. Differentiate between the physical findings associated with a hanging versus ligature strangulation.
    13. Explain how someone dies as a result of carbon monoxide inhalation.
    14. Describe the physical findings commonly associated with fire deaths.
    15. Explain how the investigator can determine if an individual was alive during a fire.
  5. Explain how to record a crime scene, collect, and preserve evidence.
    1. Identify the various classifications of sex offenses.
    2. Explain the difficulties normally associated with sex-related investigations.
    3. Explain why women may not report a sexual offense.
    4. Describe the types of physical evidence generally associated with sexual offenses.
    5. Define rape protocol.
    6. Explain proper collection techniques for offender and victim clothing in sexual offenses.
    7. Define autoerotic deaths.
    8. Identify typologies of burns associated with child abuse.
    9. Explain the shaken-baby syndrome.
    10. Identify characteristics commonly associated with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
    11. Identify and differentiate between categories of child molesters.
    12. Explain how law enforcement has attempted to thwart the proliferation of child pornography.
    13. Define incest.
    14. Explain SIDS as a diagnosis of exclusion.
    15. Describe the sexual-offender registry program.
    16. Explain the typologies of robbery.
    17. Describe the investigative techniques that should be employed when investigating a robbery.
    18. Identify investigative considerations at the scene of a burglary.
    19. Explain how to recognize burglary tools.
    20. Explain the typologies of computer crimes.
    21. Describe a computer criminal profile.
    22. Explain how to prevent computer crime.
  6. Explain appropriate protocol for collection, preservation, and transportation of physical evidence to crime lab.
  7. Conduct a follow-up investigation using a variety of techniques
  8. Identify appropriate techniques for questioning victims, witnesses, and interrogating suspects.
  9. Explain a case for court presentation.

COURSE ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION:

1. Quizzes 2. Projects 3. Examinations 4. Final examination

ACCOMMODATIONS STATEMENT:

Any student who has a documented disability and wishes to access academic accommodations (per the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and Americans with Disability Act) must contact the HCC Coordinator of Disability Services, at 620-665-3554, or the Student Success Center, Parker Student Union. The student must have appropriate documentation on file before accommodations can be provided.

ACADEMIC HONESTY:

Education requires integrity and respect for HutchCC's institutional values. HutchCC students are required to maintain honesty through a "responsible acquisition, discovery, and application of knowledge" in all academic pursuits. Preserving and upholding academic honesty is the responsibility of Hut chCC students, faculty, administrators and staff.

I. Student Responsibilities

All HutchCC students are required to:

  • Submit all work in all courses without cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, dissimulation, forgery, sabotage, or academic dishonesty as defined below.
  • Provide all academic records such as transcripts and test scores that are free of forgery.
  • Refrain from participating in the academic dishonesty of any person.
  • Use only authorized notes and student aids.
  • Use technology appropriately, including refraining from submitting AI (Artificial Intelligence)-generated work without express written consent from your instructor.
  • Protect the security of passwords/login/privacy/electronic files, and maintain sole individual access for any online course information.

II. Definition of Academic Dishonesty

  • Academic dishonesty is any intentional act, or attempted act, of cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, dissimulation, forgery, or sabotage in academic work.
  • Cheating includes using unauthorized materials of any kind, whether hard copies, online, or electronic, such as unapproved study aids in any academic work, copying another student's work, using an unauthorized "cheat sheet" or device, or purchasing or acquiring an essay online or from another student.
  • Fabrica tion is the invention or falsification of any information or citation in any academic work, such as making up a source, providing an incorrect citation, or misquoting a source.
  • Plagiarism is the representation of words, ideas and other works that are not the student's own as being original to the student. A no n-inclusive list of examples includes work completed by someone else, work generated by an external entity (such as AI), omitting a citation for work used from another source, or borrowing the sequence of ideas, arrangement of material, and/or pattern of thought of work not produced by the student, even though it may be expressed in the student's own words.
  • Dissimulation is the obscuring of a student's own actions with the intention of deceiving others in any academic work, such as fabricating excuses for absences or missed assignments, or feigning attendance.
  • Forgery of academic documents is the unauthorized altering, falsification, misrepresentation, or construction of any academic document, such as changing transcripts, changing grades on papers or on exams which have been returned, forging signatures, manipulating a digital file of academic work, or plagiarizing a translation.
  • Sabotage is any obstruction or attempted obstruction of the academic work of another student, such as impersonating another student, stealing or ruining another student's academic work.
  • Aiding and abetting academic dishonesty is considered as knowingly facilitating any act defined above.
  • Academic honesty violations can also include the omission or falsification of any information on an application for any HutchCC academic program.

III. Sanctions for Academic Dishonesty

Students who violate the Academic Honesty Policy may be subject to academic or administrative consequences.

Instructor Sanctions for Violation:

Students suspected of violating the Academic Honesty Policy may be charged in writing by their instructor and any of the following may apply:

  • Assign Avoiding Plagiarism Bridge Module
  • Receiving written warning that could lead to more severe sanction if a second offense occurs
  • Revising the assignment/work in question for partial credit
  • Voiding work in question without opportunity for make-up
  • Reducing the grade for work in question
  • Lowering the final course grade
  • Failing the work in question

Institutional Sanctions for Violation:

Students charged with academic dishonesty, particularly in instances of repeated violations, may further be subjected to an investigation and any of the following may apply:

  • Instructor recommendation to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) to dismiss the student from the course in which the dishonesty occurs
  • Instructor recommendation to the VPAA to dismiss student from the course in which the dishonesty occurs with a grade of 'F." Student will not be allowed to take a 'W' for the course
  • Instructor recommendation to the VPAA that the student be suspended and/or dismissed from the program
  • Student barred from course/program for a set period of time or permanently
  • May be recommended by the instructor (after documented repeated offenses) to the VP AA that the student be placed on probation, suspended and/or dismissed from the institution.

IV. Procedure

  • Instructor will communicate in writing via the student's HutchCC email account and/or LearningZone email account to the student suspected of violating the Academic Honesty Policy.  That communication may include sanction(s). Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation Form.
  • For each violation, the instructor will submit a completed Academic Honesty Violation Form to the Department Chair. Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation form.
  • Should the instructor choose to pursue institutional sanctions, the instruct or shall notify the student in writing via the student's HutchCC email account.  Instructor shall also submit a completed Academic Honesty Violation Form and all prior completed forms regarding said student to the Department Chair and the office of the VPAA with recommendation to proceed with specific Institutional Sanctions. Department Chair will notify the student's academic advisor upon receipt of the Academic Honesty Violation Form.
  • The decision of the VPAA on Institutional Sanction is final. The VPAA will notify the student's academic advisor of any institutional sanctions.

V. Due Process Rights

Students charged with violations of academic honesty have the right of appeal and are assured of due process through the Academic Honesty Appeal process.

Academic Honesty Appeal Process

I. Due Process Rights: Students charged with violations of academic honesty have the right of appeal and are assured of due process through the Academic Honesty Appeal process.

  • If an instructor has recommended course or program dismissal, the student may continue in coursework (provi ding there are no threatening or security behavioral issues) until appeal processes are concluded. However, if an issue has been documented at a partnership location (e.g., clinical sites, secondary institutions, correctional or military facilities), then the student is no longer eligible to continue participation in internships, apprenticeships, and/or clinical-based practice. For clinical sites, this sanction is immediate.

II. Process

If the student disagrees with the charge of a violation of academic honesty, the student has the right to due process as described in the Academic Honesty Appeal process below:

  • If the matter is not resolved upon communicating with the instructor about the violation, the student shall, within five business days of the issuance of the written notice of violation, submit a completed Academic Honesty Appeal Form and supporting documentation to the appropriate department chairperson to initiate an Academic Honesty Appeal.
  • Within two business days of receiving the student's completed Academic Honesty Appeal Form, the Department Chair and VPAA will review and the VPAA will render a decision.
  • Within two business days, a response will be sent to the student's HutchCC email address. The VPAA's decision is final.

INCOMPLETE GRADE:

Instructors may give a student a grade of Incomplete (I) under the following conditions:

  1. The student must initiate the request prior to the time final course grades are submitted to Records.
  2. The request must be made because of an emergency, illness or otherwise unavoidable life-event.
  3. The instructor must agree to the request before a grade of Incomplete can be submitted.
  4. A written contract between the instructor and student, signed by both, will document the work required and date needed to complete course work.
  5. If a student does not complete the course requirements within the time frame established by the instructor, a grade of "F" will be recorded on the student's transcript at the end of the next semester.

HLC ACCREDITATION:

Hutchinson Community College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The Higher Learning Commission is one of six regional institutional accreditors recognized by the US Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

Last Revised: 03/09/2012