BANGOR, Maine — The science behind a crime — the mystery of how physical evidence fits together to tell a story — is what attracted six Husson University students into the school’s forensic science degree program.
“You want to be able to help the people who don’t have a say,” Tiffany Field from Detroit, Maine, said Tuesday as the Husson seniors gathered near one end of the city’s airport for hands-on training in bombing crime scene investigations. The field is used by the Bangor Police Department for training.
Detective Sgt. Chris Harriman of the Maine State Police bomb squad and Trooper Brian Bean, a bomb squad technician, set off four incendiary devices: one that used 1 pound of gunpowder; a 1-pound cast booster, or high-density explosive; a detonation cord; and an improvised explosive device, or IED, made from a plastic toolbox, cellphone and batteries placed inside a duffel bag.
The explosions, which varied in intensity, sent flames, smoke and debris into the air that landed all over the ground. After the devices were detonated a safe distance away, the criminal justice students were sent in to collect evidence.
A piece of the duffel bag landed in branches about halfway up a 40-foot tree located at the edge of a paved area. Pieces of the cellphone, batteries and the orange plastic toolbox could be seen located near the blackened blast zone.
“There are four basic things we look for,” Harriman told the students. “You need a switch, a power source, you have to have a load and wire. [In this case], the load is going to be your blasting cap.”
Don’t expect to find DNA on the bomb parts, “because the heat will kill everything,” Harriman said, suggesting the students instead look for human cells on items, such as the duffel bag containing the explosive.
Bangor police Sgt. Jim Buckley, a member of the city’s bomb squad, also was on hand.
Harriman said cellphones are common in explosives because they have alarms and internal systems, such as GPS, which can issue an alert when the phone gets to a location.
“That gives the terrorist time to get away,” said Alicia Wilcox, assistant professor at Husson, who spent 10 years as a fingerprint and tire impression expert with the Maine State Police before she turned to teaching.
“A lot of the learning happens in the lab. You can only learn so much in the classroom,” the forensic science instructor said. “Today is our last lab. Last week we went to an autopsy in Augusta” before the students collected evidence at a fire scene.
The students, who all “have a strong background in physical science,” also have learned about drug analysis, fiber collection, soils, impressions, blood spatter and other specialities in their forensic studies that focus on chemistry and biology, as well as substantive, evidentiary and procedural law.
Husson started the four-year forensic science program in the fall of 2012, and the six students who graduate in May — Ryan Bourret of Rumford, Carl Hare of Stockton Springs, Jay Gagne of South China, Meagan Morris of Acton, Alyssa White of Dalton, Massachusetts, and Field — will have earned a Bachelor of Science degree. All six started in different programs and switched to forensic science when it became available.
Each student has his or her own speciality. Field and Morris focused on fingerprinting and physical matching. For Bourret, it was drug chemistry. Hare’s interests include soil analysis and arson. Gagne found firearms and toolmarks of interest, and White focused on physical evidence matching.
The graduating students, who can work in crime laboratories, law-enforcement agencies or in related medical fields, take their Forensic Science Assessment Test, issued by the American Board of Criminalistics, next week, their instructor said.
“We want to be able to combine classroom intellectual learning and hands-on learning,” Eric Gordon, Husson spokesman, said as he watched the students conduct their lab work.
It’s one thing to have the book knowledge about bombs and how they explode; “it’s another thing to see it, feel it and experience it,” Gordon said.