Welcome to IAAI’s March 2011 CFITrainer.Net Podcast. This month, our podcast features an advance look at some of the fascinating courses that will be taught at IAAI’s 2011 Annual Training Conference. ATC 2011 takes place May 1-6 in Las Vegas, NV. IAAI is bringing together many of the top instructors in fire investigation, giving the membership an unprecedented opportunity to hone their skills in a diverse range of topics. Courses offered include Changes to NFPA 921, Investigating Gas-Related Fires, Debunking the Myth that Low Voltage Assemblies Cannot Cause Fires, Electronic Evidence, New Photography Techniques, Using the Scientific Method, Interrogation, and the lessons learned from the Sofa Super Store Fire in Charleston, SC.

Earlier today, I spoke with a few of the instructors who will be presenting at ATC 2011. They gave us a little bit of a preview to their courses. We’ll start out with Barry Grimm.

BARRY GRIMM: I’m at ATC this year to discuss - actually I’m working as a practitioner with a chemist by the name of Cherie Wells, a talented young lady who has been a chemist for quite a number of years, and what we’re trying to do is critical thinking for some forensics that we think are many times forgotten by investigators. Traditional ignitable liquids are sometimes the only thing that we think we may be able to recover and it’s kind of our mind set to say, no, let’s really take a look at this total picture, and as many of us know, you’re there on your own, you know? I mean, you are everything when you work fire scenes. You usually don’t get a CSI, so you have got to capture whatever evidence is there, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about.

You know, think outside the box a little bit - a little bit of critical thinking skills to say you know what? There is - I’m far enough here away from the point of origin, that I have relevance to the particular item, I know it was handled. There’s - you know, Dave and I were talking this morning. A guy uses a knife and stabs somebody, uses the same knife to open the little crummy wooden jewelry box that is locked. So he cuts himself while he’s doing that. What’s our pecking order here? I’ve got - he throws the knife down, he’s doing a crime concealment fire. I want the knife. Is the knife that opened the box? Is it further the knife - does the blood on it belong to the victim or does the blood belong to the defendant? Are there prints on the blade of the knife? Do I first put it in a super glue tank or am I going to destroy serology?

This is why I like the idea of Cherie and I kind of working together. You’ve got a practitioner and a professional. You’ve got a lab person. Our crux is going to be you’ve got to embrace science and you’ve got to know - even if you only know a chemist, she’s going to tell you, you know what - it’s a little bit out of my ballpark because I like stuff always to be in a one gallon container, but I am going to transfer you to my buddy in serology and just ask him that question. Go to your lab, take a tour of it. Don’t be a stranger, don’t let those faces be just a voice on the phone. Put a face to the call and you’ll be doing yourself a big justice and your lab will just be like, man, this guy is really on track here and you won’t be sending them - spinning their wheels kind of stuff.

Q: What’s interesting or surprising?

BARRY GRIMM: Well I think we’re going to be talking not only about traditional evidence in ignitable liquids and its escape path and areas that it may very well be hidden in where we may have - rather than cursing the lab it may be a poor sampling technique, but we’re going to talk about where DNA may have survivability and how fragile it is to heat, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not on your scene. And the scene, to many fire investigators, just narrows itself down only to the area of origin. But it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t survivability of evidence to include fingerprints, trace evidence, hair, fibers, transfers, mechanical fits, fracture marks, fluids - body fluids. So we’re going to try in a short period of time to touch and give - and give investigators an idea to say you know what, maybe if I step back I could see the forest without the trees being in the way. So this is something that Cherie and I are going to try and get across to our audience at ATC.

JIM ALLEN: This is Jim Allen, and Joe Konefal and myself are teaching a one week course on the fundamentals of fire investigation. Both of us have prior law enforcement experience - mine with a Sheriff’s office for approximately ten years and Joe’s with a DPS agency for approximately ten years. This course covers all of the new and problematic issues relating to fire investigation because we deal with the new problematic issues found in both NFPA 1033 as well as the brand new 921.

Q: So what’s interesting or surprising for the attendees this year during your course?

JIM ALLEN: Obviously the major change is the issues of last year’s 1033, which lay out a mandated series of classes that every investigator must have before they can meet the requirements - the job performance requirements of 1033. Obviously, for anyone going into the court setting either as a civil or criminal investigator, one of the first questions is going to be do you meet the 1033 standard. As a result of this mandated list of courses, Joe and I have included the vast majority of these mandated courses along with handout material in the current class.

KARRIE CLINKINBEARD: I’m Karrie Clinkinbeard, and the course that I’m teaching is effects of ignoring the scientific method and how what you say and do as an expert can be used against you in a court of law. What we will be doing is walking through the various pitfalls that experts can fall into when conducting investigations and giving an opinion based upon those investigations, looking at each step of the scientific method, which everyone should be familiar with, and find cases where - and we’ll go through the cases where experts have been limited or their opinions have been excluded for failing to follow one or more of those steps of the scientific method and the fact that courts are actually calling out the scientific method specifically, as well as NFPA 921 and excluding those experts based upon the specific steps that are laid out in the scientific method.

In addition to that, we’ll look at the rise of litigation against experts themselves, fire investigation experts as well as other types of experts themselves arising out of the work that they’ve done and those lawsuits come from, you know, opposing parties that were affected by something that expert did or their own client strangely enough. Those claims include claims for defamation where they will claim that the expert has said something that has defamed an opposing party in their testimony and how the testimony of privileges may or may not apply to that, failing to follow the standards of the scientific method, and if that results in the exclusion of the experts opinion to the detriment of the client’s case then that may be the form of a breach of contract case. And then, there’s a whole slew of new cases that are coming out where experts as sued as third parties for spoliation or destruction of evidence.

Q: What interesting or surprising things do you think attendees will learn from your course?

KARRIE CLINKINBEARD: I think one of the most interesting things that they’ll learn is, you know, there is sort of a difference of opinion about NFPA 1033 and 921, and whether that is considered a guide or a standard, and there is definitely a split pretty much down the middle as to whether they see it as a guide or a standard, and I think what the experts will find interesting is the slew of cases that have come down. There have been at least ten in the past year from across the country that specifically call 921 out as a standard, and you know we see in quotes out of some those cases, the golden standard and the golden document for how experts are to conduct their investigations. And so I think that will probably be one of the most interesting things that they’ll find - or surprising maybe, that even the courts are calling it a standard and what affect that may have on the work that they do. Then they might find interesting that - some of the pointers that we give them to help protect themselves, both from exclusion obviously, exclusion of their opinions obviously, and then how to protect themselves and even to the point of insuring themselves, having insurance policies against these third-party lawsuits for the work that they’ve done.

We’re grateful for our instructors taking a few moments to let us know what’s going to be happening at this ATC in May. Thanks for your time.

There’s still time to register to attend ATC 2011, take these important courses, network with your fellow professionals in fire investigation, see the latest tools and equipment available, and take advantage of all that Las Vegas has to offer. You can register online at firearson.com. We have direct links for you on this podcast’s web page.

That concludes this IAAI CFITrainer.Net podcast. We’ll see you again next month. And we hope to see you at ATC 2011.