CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – On Tuesday, the Austin Peay State University Police Department and George Froggé, a criminal justice professor, collaborated to put together crime scene simulations.
Froggé told Clarksville Now this is something he used to have his students do before the pandemic, and now that regulations are easing up, he has restarted it.
“I like to give the students a chance to have some hands-on experience and opportunities,” Froggé said.
Some other things the students have learned in the course up until now have been interrogation tactics, fingerprinting and evidence recognition.
The simulation was broken into two scenarios, with teams of five going in at a time.
In the first room, there was a crime scene featuring a “deceased victim” with a gunshot wound to the head in an apparent suicide. Under the scenario, the victim’s roommate found her, and a longtime friend was on the scene. The students were tasked with determining how she was killed and if it really was a suicide, and, if it wasn’t, who killed her.
In the second room, a victim was stabbed and beaten but still conscious in a drug-deal-gone-bad scenario. The students had to gather her testimony, as well as that of the victim’s roommate, and of the man the victim said attacked her.
Lt. Christopher Jones helped create these scenarios after being a student last year. He said the scenarios are based on things he experienced during his time in the police force.
“By helping with this, we are hoping to bring some more curiosity to the field, or more intrigue to want to be a crime scene investigator or go into law enforcement altogether,” Jones said.
Austin Chambers, a student in his junior year, said the experience was eye-opening.
“You get to see it on TV and movies and all of these other things, but doing it in-person was really fun,” Chambers said.