Miranda Pederson/Daily News Kentucky State Police Trooper Charles Swiney opens the compartments of the new Crime Scene Response Vehicle - a 2010 Ford Super Duty truck - today at Kentucky State Police Post 3 on Nashville Road in Bowling Green.

advertisement

Kentucky State Police Post 3 is able to fit its investigative capabilities into the bed of a truck, with the arrival of a new Crime Scene Response Vehicle.

The new vehicle, a 2010 Ford Super Duty truck, arrived a few weeks ago at the Bowling Green post on Nashville Road.

It has an 8-foot bed that can hold supplies for crime scene processing and analysis and is equipped with a generator, trace evidence analysis and a latent fingerprint processing machine.

Trooper Charles Swiney, spokesman for Post 3, said Bowling Green is the second state police post, after Hazard, to receive a CSRV.

The truck is seen as a tool for investigations at major crime scenes, such as homicides, rapes, burglaries, robberies and arsons.

“Serious crimes require a great amount of equipment for use in investigations,” Swiney said. “This way, it can all be housed in one vehicle, someone can just get in and go instead of gathering it all and packing it up.”

The truck was purchased using about $30,000 from the sales of property seized by law enforcement.

Swiney said crime scene detectives were contacted about the kind of equipment and capabilities they needed out of a mobile forensic unit before the KSP ultimately purchased it.

Kentucky has experienced an annual average of 190 homicides in the past two years, and the state police is the lead investigating agency in about half those cases.

Many of those cases are located in rural areas with little access to crime scene support.

Post 3 was determined as the location for the second mobile forensic unit because of those circumstances. Eventually, plans call for mobile forensic units for each of the 16 state police posts.

The Post 3 mobile unit already has been called out, Swiney said, arriving on the scene in Butler County on Feb. 24 during an investigation that resulted in the arrest of 27-year-old Clifton Jones, who has been charged with murder.

“It wasn’t here I guess 10 hours and we already put it to use,” Swiney said.