The police

Members of the Investigation Team

In the Madeleine McCann case, the police were important members who were involved in the case as a whole. The police had the job to determine whether a crime has been committed or not.

The police played an important contribution to the Madeleine McCann case which involved the cordoning off of the scene to stop people from accessing the scene, to keep a log of who had either entered or left the crime scene, and also to collect and secure pieces of evidence.

Although these were the different responsibilities of the police, they were not carried out effectively. The police did not cordon off the scene immediately which meant unauthorised individuals had access to the scene, and no PPE was worn whilst collecting the evidence which meant the evidence was more open to contamination.

The police had the purpose and role to collect and handle evidence in this particular case. These pieces of evidence were;

·         Blood

·         Witness statements

·         Fingerprints

The police in the Madeleine McCann case then had the role of securing this evidence. This meant the collecting of the evidence, the labeling and packaging of the evidence, the handling of the evidence and keeping a chain of custody for those pieces of evidence.

The blood and fingerprints were collected by the police without wearing any PPE. This could suggest that the evidence that the police collected could be contaminated because they did not protect the evidence from themselves.

Witness statements were also taken from various individuals by the police. This was of to good and bad value because these witness statements gave the police more details and information but they were not taken on the night, and some were taken weeks after her disappearance.  This could have meant that false information could have been given to the police because the information won’t have been fresh in their memory.

After these pieces of evidence were correctly bagged and tagged, these were passed on to other individuals on the case which include detectives, forensics scientists and consultants.

These key pieces of evidence were then passed onto different individuals on the case.

The police would have then had contact with detectives and forensic scientist within the Madeleine McCann case. This would be to pass on evidence to the forensic scientist for analysis and to contact detectives who may want to investigate further and to also help the police with their part of the investigation.