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Officer Involved Shooting
This case was featured on the cover of the August/September 2006 issue of "Forensic Magazine" which can be accessed here. The data captured by the Leica scanner can be used to create very compelling and jury-friendly animated reconstructions of events. While animations of this nature are created in 3rd party software packages specially designed for this purpose, the all-important source data for the geometry of a given scene can come from the Leica scanner. An example from an officer involved shooting incident and resulting civil litigation follows. One of Leica's customers who is on the forefront of creating highly accurate forensic reconstructions based upon laser scan data is California-based Precision Simulations, Inc. (PSI). PSI was contracted by the City of San Francisco to assist with a reconstruction of the sequence of events leading up to plain clothes San Francisco Police Officers using deadly force to stop the driver of a vehicle that had pinned a fellow officer against a car at the conclusion of a high-speed chase. While the SFPD quickly determined that the use of deadly force was reasonable and within departmental policy, the family of the deceased brought a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the City.
Using all available documentation of the event including photos of skid marks, officer sketches and augmenting that data by laser scanning the cold scene, PSI used 3DSMax software by Autodesk to create the animation available for download here.
The family of the driver who was shot eventually dropped the case entirely and a defense attorney closely involved in the case reported that "PSI's analyses resulted in a visualization so powerful, and so precise, that I could have obtained a defense verdict with it alone. This case was featured on the cover of the August/September issue of "Forensic Magazine".
When used as part of an overall risk management program Leica's 3D laser scanning technology can be a powerful tool in helping police departments understand the truth as to what happened at an OIS. Successfully defending against just one case such as the one described above can pay for the technology many times over.
Requires Windows Media Player. 3 minutes.
 See or download the video
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