It is an investigator who brings the strings of evidence together and combines them into a legal brief of evidence that proves the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. All investigations that are undertaken by police must be premised on a genuine and dedicated search for the truth. Through the use of a logical sequence, legally obtained physical evidence, the suspects and witnesses effectively interviewed and the leads and detail of the case accurately and completely recorded and reported this becomes possible. When any crime has been committed, investigators are usually challenged with the task of determining who is responsible for the crime and then bringing offenders to justice. Bennett and Hess (2000:3) provide a good definition of criminal investigation when they state it is a process of: “...discovering, collecting, preparing, identifying and presenting evidence [before a tribunal of fact] to determine what happened and who is responsible”.
It is a police officer’s role to observe, think about, and solve problems quantitatively and systematically. Police officers attend many scenarios and it is their job to discover the truth. The use of critical thinking and the scientific method of investigation are required to find the truth. These skills go hand in hand with one another and must be utilised by police when attending a job and conducting an investigation into a crime or offence. In particular, to be able to make effective use of the scientific model, you need to be a critical thinker (Osterburg & Ward 1992 pp 11). Using the Scientific Method of Investigation requires police to identify the problem on arrival, then to form a hypothesis as to what has happened as well as possible suspects and motives. By collecting further facts, police can then review their original hypothesis and start to make an evidence based conclusion on the incident at hand. The whole point of police investigations whatever the crime or incident is to arrive at the...