THE FACT OF THE DAY. Some 100 criminal cases were selected to take advantage of new investigations. An investigation found Wednesday in the “Crime Time” on RTL
The French judicial police for a year screened 200 criminal cases dating from four to thirty years, these famous” cold cases “, to retain 97 that might be restarted. They will be screened to a new analysis by the Central Office for combating violence to people (OCRVP), a specialized service that lists all unresolved cases in France.
Their goal? Try cross-checking with other cases and check that all the clues have been operated during the investigation.
Since 1 st January 2003, the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police has said the software analysis system links the violence associated with crime (ViCLAS). Behind this acronym hides a formidable computing tool, originally developed by the Royal Canadian Gendarmerie early 1990. It is used to make connections between the cases solved or not. It retains only violent crimes (homicide, rape, sexual assault and attempted) without apparent motive. The supposed criminal disappearances and discovery of unidentified corpses are also part of the data. The aim is to forge links between business, distinct in appearance over time and space but can conceal a joint author. Using VICLAS requires rigor. Only a handful of analysts will introduce procedural elements provided by investigators, sometimes at their request and sometimes that of the OCRVP. procedure, schedule of events, patterns of victims, said by the perpetrators are elements that can be identified by analysts to power the software.
Since 2003, VICLAS accumulated in memory data from more than 13 000 criminal cases. It yielded 281 “reconciliation reports” concerning 220 victims. The alleged serial rapist Arnaud Hopfner, 40, tried this week to five rapes in the Assize of Meurthe-et-Moselle court was confused with VICLAS.
tHE wORD “Cold case”
the term has become familiar since the release of the American series played by Lilly Rush, the Philadelphia criminal police inspector who unearths classified criminal records and unresolved. But there is so far no clear legal definition of these cases remained without judicial response. “They can be summarized in non-prescribed criminal cases on which investigations have not succeeded immediately after failing to formally put into question an alleged” says Lieutenant Colonel André Brothier gendarmerie. It remains to define after how long a criminal case joined the ranks of cold cases. Here again no clear definition. But police and gendarmes agree that if, after four years of investigation, nothing has been achieved in a folder, it then carries the seal “unresolved.” For some judges, the cold case exists only when the case is closed pending a new element.
No comments:
Post a Comment