Criminal identification technicians succeed in revealing objects, bloodstains, prints or DNA traces even in extreme conditions. They opened the doors to their laboratory.
Death by gunshot, suspicion of murder at home, suspicious death, the TIC du Gard witnesses mind-blowing scenes. But they are equipped with high-performance tools. The end of the perfect crime? In any case, this is a strong trend in the gendarmerie which has a laboratory integrated into the Gard group. The police's crime experts? The criminal identification technicians (Tic) whose blue truck we sometimes see in blue with “criminal identification gendarmerie” written in blue are assigned to the most serious cases to collect the maximum number of clues that will make it possible to identify a suspect and ultimately to have him judged.
Murders, fires, robberies
The Tic du Gard generally work on the hottest or most complex files. Because at the local level, each company has teams that can take simple samples in a burglary case. If it is an unremarkable file, the samples are even made by the local gendarmerie brigade. If, on the other hand, the case concerns the heist of an arms factory or a jewelry factory with significant losses, the group's experts are dispatched to the scene. In criminal matters, “it is systematically the teams from the group that are deployed”notes Colonel Emmanuel Casso who commands the Gard gendarmerie group.
War machine
As soon as the protocol is initiated, a real war machine is set in motion with gendarmes who have the status of judicial police officers (OPJ) and who have perfect knowledge of the field. Pascal Sperandio, who is preparing to retire, has spent 23 years scouring crime scenes and has an ultra-sharp eye. And obviously, he scrupulously analyzes crime scenes and deploys very precise protocols with his colleague Laurent. First freeze the premises, ensure that no one has polluted the site, take photos and secondly, the sampling part is implemented. This is how they take fingerprints and DNA samples. “One of the big developments is undoubtedly in genetics”.
DNA amplification helps identify suspects with micro-traces
Indeed, DNA sequencing and amplification makes it possible to work on very small quantities of biological traces. “Now with micro-traces, it is possible to extract a DNA profile. 20 years ago, it was necessary to have a trace of blood, for example from a 2 euro coin, today, a very small trace or even a micro trace of a millimeter or less, we can produce a profile because the material has evolved considerably”explains Pascal Sperandio. Techniques have evolved considerably and make it possible to extract DNA from water and even from burned media. Techniques which remain quite secret to prevent drug traffickers in particular from adapting their operating methods. Because if the gendarmes remain confronted with “general” crime, areas labeled rural no longer escape the settling of scores with weapons of war or even with corpses burned in vehicles. Also, while they readily admit that they can extract DNA traces even under water or on a charred vehicle, the details of their recipes remain secret.
A lab that allows exchanges with Interpol
The organization of the gendarmerie makes it possible to scale the scientific response according to the seriousness of a case. Thus, at the level of gendarmerie brigades or communities of brigades, there is a first level, “the local criminal identification technicians, then at the departmental level, these are the criminal identification technicians then at the national level, it is the criminal research institute of the national gendarmerie (IRCGN)”notes Colonel Casso. About 20 years ago a sort of “decentralization took place in the gendarmerie to relieve the IRCGN, certain departments of which were saturated. It is in this sense that platforms were created at the departmental level and that a new three-level criminalistic chain was created with its own actors”specifies Pascal Sperandio, one of the best forensic experts in the south of France. The standardization of protocols allows the Gard gendarmes to speak with the same standards, the same codes as their Parisian or Bordeaux colleagues or even exchange with private laboratories working on a case. Better ? The Gard laboratory is ISO 1725 certified and has technology that allows the transmission and exchange of standardized data throughout Europe. Concretely, the DNA profile or a fingerprint of a killer can be transmitted in one click to Madrid or Berlin and vice versa. The standardization of our techniques “facilitates European cooperation with structures such as Interpol or Europol”, we add at the level of the Gard group.
The next revolution (which is already underway) is that of artificial intelligence which greatly facilitates the profiling of suspects and puts into perspective the operating mode, locations, telephony, facial recognition, biometrics, explains Let's go to the group's lab where activity remains very brisk. For example, ICTs were called in 2023 to 304 crime scenes and received 104 requisitions. This means that they are responsible for analyzing seals to try to find a DNA trace or a fingerprint, for example.
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