On Wednesday, June 2 from 6:00-9:00PM, you are all invited to the museum and try your hand at a handful of crime-investigating activities, from analyzing blood spatter and bullet evidence to identifying tool marks and foot prints. This event will be adults-only, as some of the material presented will be somewhat graphic.

The Police Museum, of course, is housed in a building that was once Vancouver’s City Morgue and Coroner’s Court; over 15,000 autopsies were performed in this space between 1932 and 1980 and countless pieces of evidence were analyzed downstairs in the City Analyst’s Lab. This place is as close as you can get to CSI:Vancouver.

Photo by Kim Werker

Stay tuned for additional announcements about this event; we’re working hard to line up some great surprises for you all!

If you plan on attending, please RSVP in the comments below or at http://vancouvertweetup.com/; we’d like to get a rough idea of the number of attendees so that we can plan accordingly.

See you soon!

(Also, we’ve posted the next series of our “Forensics for Adults” workshops. You can find info (and tickets) here.)

Spring Break was busy for us, in fact it was easily the busiest the museum has ever been; we ran forensics-themed workshops and our drop-in investigation and were completely overwhelmed with visitors. Without buying a single piece of advertising or sending out a solitary press release, we were so busy that we came very close to being over-capacity in our building.

How do we follow up that success? Do it again, with a little better planning this time. (Now that we know how popular these activities can be…)

On select days through the summer, we will be hosting a new series of workshops for kids seriously interested in forensic science. Each workshop will go hands-on with a different topic, including fingerprints, impression evidence (foot and tire prints), forensic entomology (bugs) and ballistics. A workshop for older students on blood spatter will also be offered. After the workshop, students are welcome to explore the museum and put their new skills to the test with our Forensics Drop-in activities at no additional charge. ($10/student, $5/member; spaces are limited and reservations are required.)

Our topics include:

• Fingerprints – Every time we touch something we leave unique marks. Come learn about the types of fingerprints, how we find and collect them and how we analyse them. Suitable for ages 7-12.
• Impression Evidence – Footprints, tire treads, bite marks and tool marks. Come find out how we use all different kinds of impressions to catch bad guys. Suitable for ages 7-12.
• Forensic Entomology – Sometimes, creepy crawlies provide the best evidence to solve a crime. You’ll learn all about bugs and how they make great witnesses. Suitable for ages 7-12.
• Ballistics – This workshop will explore how we analyze guns and bullets as evidence. . Suitable for ages 7-12.
• Blood Spatter – What story do these shapes and patterns tell us? Not for the feint of heart, this workshop will explore the basics of blood spatter analysis. Suitable for ages 10-15.

Workshops run for one hour. There are only 25 spaces in each workshop, so book soon! (The schedule of workshops is available here.)

Hopefully we can recreate a little bit of our Spring Break Miracle.

The planned schedule is as follows, with each workshop running from 11:00-11:45AM. We may add additional times if these workshops prove to be as popular as we expect them to be.

• Mar 16 – Fingerprints
• Mar 17 – Impression Evidence
• Mar 18 – Forensic Entomology
• Mar 19 – Ballistics
• Mar 20 – Blood Spatter (for older kids only!)
  

For more information, check out the details here. There are limited spaces in each workshop, so register your kids early.