Using new technology, the Chattanooga Police Department’s Leica ScanStation C10 combines laser and camera technology. The system can capture details of a crime scene moments after investigators arrive, then reproduce it in three dimensions on a screen. This example shows Chattanooga City Hall from various angles and perspectives.
Sometime next year, Hamilton County jurors will be able to stride past yellow crime scene tape and into a home where a man was shot dead hours earlier.
The jurors may walk into the kitchen – where the slain man still lies on the floor – and peer at the scene from every corner of the room. They can measure the distance between bloodstains, trace the trajectory of the fatal bullets, then walk out into the street to see which way the shooter fled.
And they will never leave the courtroom.
It’s all possible because of a briefcase-sized machine with a long name: the Leica Geosystems ScanStation C10. Using laser and camera technology, the ScanStation can freeze a crime scene moments after detectives arrive, then reproduce it on a screen in three dimensions.
“Instead of just seeing a picture of a bullet hole and then looking at a floor plan to see where the bullet hit, you can go in the house, turn a corner, and see the bullet right there in the wall,” said Chattanooga Police Assistant Chief Tim Carroll, head of the criminal investigations unit.