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MU Home » Academicss » School of Public Affairs » Department of Justice Studies, Forensic Science & Cyber Crime

Faculty and Students present at the North Carolina Criminal Justice Association annual conference.

On February 15, 2013 faculty and students from MU's Justice Studies and Applied Forensic Science reviewed their work on homicide cold cases. To view the one hour and twelve minute presentation click on the embedded video below.

Applied Forensics Students and Faculty Present at Raleigh PD Community Policing Symposium

Serena Hare (standing L) and Alyssa Freeborough (seated R) presenting at Community Policing Symposium

On May 10, 2012 Applied Forensics students Serena Hare and Alyssa Freeborough and faculty members Mark Bowman and Dave Pauly presented to participants at the Raleigh Police Department’s Community Policing symposium. A copy of the presentation can be found at this link. The students and faculty described the unique collaborative relationship between our students and faculty, the Fayetteville Police Department, and Fayetteville/Cumberland County Crime Stoppers. This collaborative relationship has resulted in our student interns reviewing homicide cold case files, digitizing those files, reviewing physical evidence for possible new scientific analyses, production of a set of cold case playing cards, and production of informational videos on specific cold cases. Symposium organizers were interested in showcasing this unique example of expanding community policing concepts of collaboration between police, community groups, and academia into investigative operations.

Cold Case Video Project

Justice Studies Senior Seminar Class and Cold Case Playing Card Poster Students are L - R: Richard Rivera, Jasmine Stephens, Jacob Drumheller, Anthony Autry, and Elicia Kieser

The cold case video project is a follow on to the work of the members of the Fayetteville Police Department's Homicide Squad, the Fayetteville/Cumberland County Crime Stoppers, and interns from Methodist University and Fayetteville State University. Members of the Homicide Squad and Crime Stoppers wanted to produce a set of cold case playing cards for distribution in local jails and other locations. The challenge in accomplishing that was the ability of either group to devote the work effort to organize the information for publication. Interns from Methodist University and Fayetteville State University devoted over 500 hours of work effort to the tedious task of reviewing unsolved homicide and missing persons' cases for possible inclusion in a cold case playing card deck. That hard work came to fruition with the release of the cold case playing card deck on April, 23, 2012. Click on this link to view the deck of cards in a poster recently produced by Mike Harrison of the Methodist University Print Shop.

Distribution of cold case playing cards has been an effective strategy to publicize cold cases and to gather additional leads in those cases. Another strategy is to publicize each case with a short video presentation that provides more information than can be included on a playing card. Methodist University Justice Studies students undertook such a project in the Spring 2012 semester. The Justice Studies Senior Seminar students produced 26 videos which will be posted on You Tube by the Fayetteville Police Department's Public Information Officer. The remaining 26 videos will be produced by Justice Studies students in their Senior Seminar class in the Fall 2012 semester.

The student team also produced a continuity book for the student team who would follow them. This book provides detailed descriptions of the production processes involved in creating the videos. A copy of the Continuity Book is provided here for those who are interested in replicating the project.