CSI Class Teaches Science, Safety Lessons

Although modest compared to most La Cañada properties, the stucco home pictured in the oversized photo looked like many others in Southern California. Plush green grass covered the front yard, flowers snaked along the side. A child’s bicycle leaned against the wall of this two-story Lawndale structure.

Nothing about the unassuming exterior hinted at the violent crime committed in the living room. So when senior criminalist J.J. Cavaleri of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department clicked to the next Power Point slide, a chorus of gasps rippled through the library at Paradise Canyon Elementary.

Images of a ransacked room, blood splatter and other evidence of multiple felonies flashed before the fifth and sixth graders in their weekly after school class, Criminal Justice II, CSI Crime Scene Investigation. Taught by Valerie Aenlle-Rocha, a deputy district attorney and grand jury legal advisor for Los Angeles County, the GATE class comprises 45 students from , and .

In addition to Cavaleri, who works in the sheriff department’s trace evidence section, professionals who’ve presented during the month-long course include arson investigators and detectives. This week the deputy county coroner will speak to the students and the class wraps up March 31 with a homicide detective.

“The kids see where [Hollywood] got the idea for the TV show, and how all kinds of science is used in crime scenes,’’ Aennle-Rocha said, noting there’s also a safety message that runs through the classes: just because you live in a good neighborhood, you still need to be vigilant and make smart choices, like not going hiking or running by yourself along Angeles Crest Highway.

“No place is crimeless. Lock your doors, close your windows and make sure you’re safe in your house,’’ Aenlle-Rocha advised her students after Cavaleri pointed out that the attacker in this particular case climbed into the house through a second-floor window left open for the cat.

Aennle-Rocha started the CSI classes six years ago. While some of the subject matter may be of a mature nature, she pointed out that these students have already had their health class that teaches them about the types of bodily fluids they’ll hear about in various crimes.

Cavaleri showed examples of how forensic scientists use fingerprints, trace evidence, hairs and blood to distinguish victim from suspect, and how even if the attacker tried to wipe up the blood, scientists use alternate light sources to highlight smears invisible to the naked eye.

And just to make sure he left no one hanging, Cavaleri told the kids that police caught the suspect in the Lawndale crime, and even used a vocabulary word – remorse – of which the suspect showed none, as he smiled during the reading of his 110-year sentence.  

“Maybe he was smiling because he was planning how he would escape,’’ one girl offered from the front row.

Sixth grader Evan LeBlanc said he likes the class because the people who speak to them have interesting things to say.

“They show you how it’s really done. Not like all the fake stuff on TV,’’ the 11-year-old LCE student said.