Criminal Justice
‘New’ Low-Tech Crime Tool: Trackers
Posted Aug 29, 2007, 01:03 pm CST
By Martha Neil
In an age of increasingly high-tech criminal investigation techniques, some are finding that a low-tech traditional method is underused.
Special trackers, whose skills are similar to those used for thousands of years by hunters but honed for criminal investigation, can see a great deal in crime scenes that reveal little to others, reports the Seattle Times. The technique has been used for some time to help search-and-rescue squads find people who are lost, but has only recently started to gain favor as a criminal investigation tool, the newspaper writes.
One local expert promoting the "new" old technique is King County Sheriff's Deputy Kathleen Decker, who herself is a skilled tracker. "In the shooting death of a man found not long ago near Interstate 90," writes the Times, "she was able to determine that the wound was self-inflicted by noting that there was no sign of a fight or struggle, and by examining footprints and determining that they belonged to only one person."