Dozens of student sleuths attend first Modesto police CSI Camp

Dozens of juveniles were photographed and fingerprinted at Enslen Park on Monday morning, but they were absolutely on the right side of the law.

The 25 fifth- through eighth-graders are participating in the first CSI Camp, presented by the Modesto Police and Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods departments. They’ll meet from 8 a.m. to noon each day this week to learn, as Assistant Police Chief Rick Armendariz put it, that there’s much more to law enforcement and criminal justice than “officers out at scenes making arrests.”

The department’s entire CSI Unit – identification technicians Sharon Bear, Erin Gonzales and Sarah Harcrow – is helping the students learn everything from taking 911 calls to documenting crime scenes, lifting fingerprints and collecting other evidence, and maintaining the chain of custody with evidence.

The campers also will be visited this week by officers doing K9 and SWAT demonstrations and by detectives stressing the importance of safe behavior on the internet.

Monday, camp kicked off with the Pledge of Allegiance and physical exercise, as it will each day. Then the kids in their CSI Camp T-shirts settled into desks in the park’s Boy Scout Club House to learn camera basics and the importance of photographing a crime scene.

Marshall Elementary fifth-grader Alex Gruenke told Harcrow he was “really interested” in her presentation on photography. He has five cameras himself, Alex said later. “My dad’s friend is a photographer and I always wanted to do photography. ... I think it’s a beautiful art.”

While it would be hard to call crime-scene photography beautiful, Alex added, “I think it’s something I might like.”

The kids then delved into fingerprinting. They learned three types of fingerprints: latent, meaning prints not visible to the naked eye, left by the oils, sweat and acid in our hands; plastic, meaning impressions made by pressing fingers into, say, wax, soap or play dough; and patent, which are left when a person’s fingers are coated with something visible, like blood, motor oil or ink.

They also were shown how to read fingerprints for unique ridges, scars and creases. They played a game with a sheet of 42 fingerprints to see how many matching prints they could find.

“I’m really interested in things like fingerprinting and investigating. And I like police officers a lot,” said camper Alberto Ruedas, who’s entering ninth grade at Valley Charter School.

Engaging and educating youth and opening their eyes to various career paths are key reasons he asked the CSI Unit and the parks department to put together the camp, Armendariz said. “It goes along with the schools’ STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) focus but at the same time keeps it fun,” he said.

The fun was obvious Monday as kids did things like jump around for Harcrow’s camera outdoors and in a closet to learn how shutter speeds capture sharp and blurred images in light and dark.

The camp also is showing how sworn officers and nonsworn officers like the CSI technicians and crime prevention officers work together to keep the community safe and apprehend criminals, Armendariz said. “We would love eventually be able to recruit from people who grew up in our community,” he said. “At the very least, we want to get them exposed to our Explorer program, which they can join when they’re 15 1/2 .

He and Bear both stressed that fifth to eighth grade is an impressionable time when children begin to make decisions that can shape future behavior and have lasting consequences.

“Whether they decide to get into law or medical or legal careers, the underlying thing we want them to get is the importance of choices, leadership, heading in the right path,” Armendariz said.

The camp, Bear added, “introduces them to science and to law enforcement, like Explorers, and this is kind of the age group where they’ll make choices that would allow or prevent their participation in Explorers.”

Those choices include how they conduct themselves on social media, which will be the topic when detectives with the Police Department’s Special Victims Unit talk with the campers later this week.

Also coming in to work with the students is Enochs High School biotech teacher Dave Menshew, who developed a strawberry DNA extraction laboratory kit.

He also will show the kids how found bones can be used to determine things like a person’s height.

Tuesday, the campers will receive crime scene training, and on Friday, they’ll investigate a mock crime scene using what they learn this week.

The camp, paid for with money from a grant and the Police Department’s drug task force asset-forfeiture fund, will conclude with the kids receiving certificates and “Modesto Police CSI Unit” pins. Police detectives also will barbecue for them.

A fee of $40 was charged to families to ensure commitment to attend, Bear said, because there was a waiting list of kids.

If the camp is deemed a success, she said, the city will try to do three weeklong sessions next summer, one each month.

What will determine success? “We’ll gauge the kids’ enthusiasm,” Bear said.

And how will that be done? “We’ll see,” said Police Department spokeswoman Heather Graves, “how many are still here at the end of the week.”

This story was originally published June 27, 2016 at 3:34 PM with the headline "Dozens of student sleuths attend first Modesto police CSI Camp."