PSTs Troy Montemayor,
Jennifer Stewart, and Corrie Turner
In addition to assisting at the front counter, Police
Service Technicians also provide support to other units within the
department. PST’s are provided training in order to recognize potential
evidence and perform basic criminal investigations. PST’s are tasked with
inspecting vehicles for citation corrections and write police reports
dealing with non-emergency calls, such as auto burglaries, building
burglaries, vandalism, stolen vehicles, lost and found property. These
cases involve circumstances where there is little or no suspect
information or active leads to pursue.
All of the Police Services Technicians have received
training as crime scene technicians. Their
training ranges from sixty to one-hundred twenty hours and covers varying
topics including fingerprinting, casting of impression evidence, crime
scene photography, firearm trajectories, and homicide scene investigation.
Several PST’s have been trained in the use of the Sokkia and Nikon total
stations to diagram crime and accident scenes. One PST has also attended
advanced crime scene investigation and crime scene reconstruction courses.
The PST’s use this training daily,
whether
it be collecting latent fingerprints from an auto burglary
or photographing a suspicious death. Two PST’s are members of the IMPACT
team and photograph and diagram major injury, fatal vehicle accidents, and
officer involved shootings for other agencies and the crime lab. One PST
is a trained and certified property management specialist for the State.
Property management includes the receipt, security, and disposition of
evidentiary, found, and other custodial property. Additionally, the PST’s
use their knowledge to instruct the Citizen’s Academy, conduct line-up
training, special events at local schools and to speak to civic groups.
