Madison County Citizens get inside look at crime scene investigations

Community members are getting a firsthand look at what it takes to work in law enforcement through the Madison County Sheriff’s Office Citizens Academy.

A part of this week's class focused on the often unseen work that goes into solving crimes in the science of crime scene investigation.

Inside the Sheriff’s Office administrative building in Huntsville, decades of evidence are stored, representing years of hard work and dedication from investigators. Senior Crime Scene Investigator Jacob Fanning, says he's spent the last ten years processing and preserving the evidence for nearly every major case in Madison County.

“A lot of your crimes, especially property crimes, the only way of identifying the offender is by forensic evidence, whether it’s DNA, fingerprints, or something like that,”