Imagine that you’ve been in a terrible accident, and you are rushed to the hospital. Doctors and nurses are buzzing in and out, checking your vitals, and administering medication. But as the hours pass, you realize that no one is writing anything down in your chart. And curiously, no one is asking you how you are doing, what you remember, or wanting to know your medical history. You start to panic, because you know that you might be getting too much or too little medication. You may have injuries no one has noticed, because no one has examined you. What if you are getting important treatment because the caregivers assigned to your case don’t know what the other team members have done? What if someone isn’t doing what they are supposed to? Who would ever know?

Just as we would expect medical professional to understand the critical importance or proper documentation, we should demand nothing less from law officers sworn to protect and serve us. Doctors go through years of training to be able to learn best practices so they can deliver high quality, consistent healthcare to their patients. Competent death scene investigators do the same. There are best practices for securing scenes, avoiding bias, collecting evidence, evaluating that evidence, and coming to evidence-based conclusions. These investigations should proceed in a logical and methodical manner and what is discovered should be meticulous documented. Today, we are going to compare industry accepted best practices for death scene investigation documentation to what was done in the case of Kadie, River, and Aadon’s deaths. You can decide for yourself if her death investigation was documented properly.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices