Capstone #7

All of the hard work comes together. The nerves start to set in. Performing my Capstone was not as easy as I thought and I will tell you why it wasn’t easy

 

Going into the presentation I thought I had it in the bag. I did my first slide easily, and I thought, I am good at this! But towards the end of my second slide knew it had to come, I messed up. It wasn’t bad though because I thought I had to change the slide but I had to say something. It was really embarrassing but I had to keep going.

 

Although it was just a recording their was so much pressure on me. One time I was supposed to say something but I forgot I was so I just went on and then realized what I was supossed to say. I was explaining what an autopsy was but then I just blanked out and had no idea what I was doing!

 

In conclusion Capstone was a great expierence and next time I should be more prepared.

 

This is my video:

Capstone #6

Capstone is awesome! The research, blog posts, script all of it. But the most fun is making the script and slide show.

The Script was not very hard because I knew what I wanted to write I just had to put it together. When I was doing it, I realized I had to explain somethings because some people might not know what an

Autopsy is. One reason why it was kind of easy to do because my last blog post had a lot of information and in the right form to talk with. If you are wondering, What is your script? Well here it is.

 

My Script:

 

Slide 1: Have any of you ever seen the movie Ocean’s Eight? The movie is about someone who gets out of jail and commits a heist. Many people perform heists like they do in Ocean’s Eight. I decided to research about how detectives would solve crimes like the one in Ocean’s Eight and many other crime movies. The question I will be answering for you all today is, What are the techniques used by detectives and how has it evolved over time?

 

Slide 2: So what does a detective really do? First off, no matter what the case is, detectives follow the same steps to solve a crime. When detectives first arrive at the crime scene, they do a walk through to get a rough idea of what happened. In the crime scene, detectives begin to look for evidence, such as markings,     hair, bloodstains, fibers, and footprints at the crime scene. After the evidence is collected, detectives begin to interview witnesses or suspects. Detectives preserve every piece of evidence they find so the evidence won’t get touched by any other substances. Evidence can’t be touched by any outside substances   because detectives want to find DNA or fingerprints on the evidence. This practice of preserving the material and studying it very closely is called forensics. Practices like forensics are involved with advanced technology.

 

Slide3: Technology, such as the iphone, has been improved over the years! Something you can have on your phones is social media. Social media is so frequently used, it can help make a detectives work that much easier. On Facebook “The old instagram” one can easily find personal information, such as a license plate. Everything recorded or sent like texting, voice chat, or posts must be saved by the government for at least one a year for security reasons.

 

Slide4: Fingerprinting is very useful to detectives because it can find a lot of information like someone’s identification.  detectives sprinkle powder over a spot and if they find a fingerprint, detectives pick the print up with a special type of tape. Detectives preserve the fingerprint and match it with someone’s identification. Technology not only makes our lives easier, it makes a detectives work easier too.

 

Slide5: so , is it easier or harder to convict a criminal now or in the past? Well, back then there were some of the same procedures as there are now, like the Autopsy. An autopsy is when someone is killed and they look inside the body to find skin and fibers. The very first recorded autopsy  was performed on julius caesar in 44 BC! THis is kind of gross but he was stabbed 23 times but only 1 killed him!

 

Slide6: Back to what was going to say, Edmond Locard from france created the very first forensics lab in 1910. Have you ever seen those massive microscopes? The real name for that is the compound microscope. The compound microscope was invented by Zacharias Jansenn in 1590, it used to be something small and  portable. The microscope allows detectives to see evidence too small for the human eye. Let’s think once again about fingerprinting, fingerprinting used to be ink and you would roll your fingers on a piece of paper but now it is scanned and put right onto a computer. Although Caesar’s time had autopsies like today, the microscope made solving crimes much easier today than Caesar’s time by seeing stuff too small to see like DNA and Fingerprint.

 

Slide7: After all of this, you might be thinking… ‘okay, we know what detectives do, we know what they use, and we know how far some of the equipment has come, but what is the process when it comes to  convict someone?’ The answer to that is going to court. Court is pretty much the government’s opportunity to put someone into jail. But for them to do that it has to be ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. This means the juries can’t have the slightest bit of doubt for them to put someone in jail. Detectives give the juries evidence to help the juries make up their minds.

 

Slide 8: All in all, a detective’s role is to gather evidence and give it to the government. If you are still interested and want to learn more please visit my blog.

 

Capston is a great project and I am so, so happy I got the chance to do it.

Capstone #5

When you see a police car zoom by with their sirens on, do you ever wonder what happened? Well that’s what happens with me. I will tell you about some of the ‘behind the scenes’ work of what might happen. I have many questions, but my biggest question is my main inquiry question. My question is, What are the techniques used by detectives and how have they evolved over time? There are different types of ranks in the police force. A detective is a high ranking. To become a detective you have to go through four to five years of experience.

 

So, what does a detective do? No matter what crime scene a detective is investigating, they follow the same steps. Detectives do a walk through so they can get a rough idea of what happened. Then they interview suspects or even witnesses. Detectives then begin to look for evidence such as, markings, hair, bloodstains, fibers, and footprints at the crime scene. In some movies, the methods detectives use can be what detectives do in real life. If there are screws in a door, it might be necessary to take the door off in case there is anything on it. Wet materials like blood have to be dried out so it won’t get any chemicals on it. A detective does all of this while wearing gloves so that the evidence is not changed.

 

Now, you know what a detective does. It is important to know What detectives use to figure out some of their cases. Through the years, technology has been improved to help in the solving of crimes, even social media, like Facebook. Detectives can go on Facebook and easily get a license plate. Some methods used to look for fingerprints are when they sprinkle the fingerprints with a special powder and then pick the print up with a special tape. Detectives have a database just for shoes! That shoe database updates 4 times every year about 2,000 shoe prints added to the system annually! These last two paragraphs show the ways that it is determined that an individual committed a crime.

 

So, is it easier or harder to convict a criminal now or in the past? Back then there were some of the same procedures as there are now Some of  the equipment has changed but it’s the same concept. Like in 1910, Edmound Locard from France, created the first forensics lab. But those labs have been upgraded ever since. The compound microscope used to be something small and portable but now it is bigger and has more lenses to look at the object with. Well, what about the finger print? Fingerprinting is one of the most important parts about solving a crime. Fingerprinting used to be ink and now you just scan your finger.

 

After all of this, you might be thinking… ‘okay, we know what detectives do, we know what they use, and we know how far some of the equipment has come but what is the process when it comes to  convict someone?’ The answer to that question is going to court. Court is the government opportunity to put someone in custody. But before anyone is punished for a crime, it has to be proven,‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. This means the jury cannot have the slightest doubt that he/she didn’t do it. There is always different jury’s. A person is tried in court in front of a group of their peers. To be chosen to be in a jury, you get asked questions by attorneys. Based on his/her responses they can be excused from the jury or assigned to the case. What a judge does is collect evidence from both sides. That is how  they determine if he or she actually committed the crime.

 

All in all, there is a lot of steps to a crime. You might just see a police car zoom by but that could be to get to a car crash or even to a robbery. If it is a robbery it can be as easy as watching the people leave the place or as long as a couple months to find out who did it. If it has to do with driving like speeding, looking at your phone, or alcohol, those do not take that much time. As the technology has improved over time, it has become easier to solve crimes. The coolest thing in my opinion is, how all of the equipment evolved over time.

Capstone #4

So, A long side the interview, you also had to do a site visit. The site visit is kind of like the interview, like it had to be related to your topic. I decided to go to the Scarsdale Police Department (SPD). The officers were really coroperitive and had Lutenutue Grgas take us around to see the place.

 

When my dad and I got there, lutenutte Grgas came to meet us  and he took us in side. He first took us to the “Booking room”. Inside there was a holding sell, a fingerprint scanner, and an alcohol tester. The holding cell is when they put someone in the cell while the cops try and figure out what actually happened. The most amount of time spent in the cell is usually around 3 hours. The finger print used to be ink and you would roll your finger in the ink. Now that stuff is a lot easier because when it gets scanned it goes right onto a computer.

 

When we were pretty much finished with the inside we got to check out one of the cars! It was really cool to see because I usually see the cars as a regular car with a computer inside, well, it does have a computer inside but on the back of the car, on each side, there are license plate trackers, (they kind of look like toaster ovens.) on the ceiling of the cars there is an AR 15. Just like in the building they have an alcohol test the cars have one but not as accurate as the one in the building.

 

This trip was awesome! I am so happy I got to do this.      

Capstone #3

Do you have friends or family that know a lot about something you are very interested in? Well, part of our capstone is pretty much that. We had to find someone that works or has something to do with your topic and ask them a few questions. So for me I interviewed my babysitter’s dad who is a cop in Mount Vernnon.

 

So before I knew who I was interviewing and what my questions were I sat down and had to think, Who could I interview? Do I know a detective? Well I didn’t know a detective but I did know a cop. Even though it wasn’t exactly who I was looking for, he still had the general idea of a detective.

 

When I did the interview it was over facetime. Some of the questions were, What rank are you? Or, What is your favorite part about being a cop? He was a K-9 so that means he worked with dogs. Mount Vernnon is more of a sketchy place, there was more crime.

 

The interview was very helpful and I learned a lot!  

 

capstone #2

So for our capstone project this week we have be finding our main inquiry question and sub questions. The inquiry question is a main question you want to focus on for the whole project. The sub questions are smaller questions that help answer your main question.

 

Before we made our sub questions we had to make the main inquiry question. I had a pretty broad topic like ‘crime’ but I had to think of a part of crime that interested me. But it had to be a broad enough question to have some smaller questions inside of the bigger question. I had a really hard time coming up with a question. So when I finally did come up with the question I was really proud. My question was, “What are the techniques used by detectives and criminologists and how have they evolved over time?”

 

Once I finished with the main question it was time to start my sub questions! Making the sub questions was a lot easier because when we were doing the paper to determine the topic, I was writing down a bunch of questions. But I only used one or two. Me and another teacher came up with the rest. When we were all done with the sub questions, we started to ‘research’. Well, not really research, we weren’t writing anything down. We were just trying to find good websites that we could trust, and get a feel of our topic. It felt like there was literally no good websites for my topic. There was only about three websites that looked like I could trust.

 

I really feel that this week was a lot easier than last week.

 

Capstone #1

At school the fifth grade is doing a capstone project. This is a research project on a topic of your choice. We spent the week brainstorming ideas on what we want out topic to be. So we started thinking what would be a good research topic for the six weeks of this project. After we  thought we had a topic, we did a paper and what that topic could kind of relate to. Part of the project we have to interview someone and go visit somewhere. We had to keep that in mind

I narrowed my selection down to 2 topics. One of them was car parts, I have always loved cars and what’s inside of them. My other topic was, crime. I have always loved that who did it mysteries. I decided to choose crime. I am really excited for this project and am looking forward to it.

Blog#4

I think this immigration project was so fun! some of the stuff was kind of hard but that’s what made it so fun. I like when there is a little challenge. When I say challenge i mean the video. The person

I interviewed didn’t have any pictures so i had to look some up.

I think i am really happy with my final video. Some of the audio were different volumes. I think I would re-recorded the hole thing. I would do that because sometimes it was really hard to hear me. This project was so fun.

Blog#3

After we did the interview, we had to make a video. We made a script. I was kind of hard because I took the best facts from my notes and it was hard finding the best and trying to figure out what fact went where. It was also hard finding the right pictures.

The easiest part was figuring out the music and stuff like that. I didn’t have a lot of time to make the video because I’ve been busy. Adobe spark is where we made our video. It was really easy because it did a lot of stuff for you.the video was the most fun but the hardest part.

Blog#2

The day of my interview I didn’t really know what to expect. I was playing basketball in my driveway when Amanda showed up. She came with her two kids. It was kind of awkward because I haven’t seen her in a long time. My mom started talking to Amanda and her kids and told her what was going on. When i feel something is awkward I start making jokes that nobody laughs at.

I think the interview didn’t go how I expected. I thought I was going to be comfortable but I felt kind of weird. I think the most interesting thing i learned from the interview was that Amanda came here on vacation and stayed here. I learned to stay calm when ever I am doing an interview.