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While all types of police equipment are steadily becoming more sophisticated, it is the police equipment used for crime investigation that is evolving at the fastest pace, by the incorporation of the latest trends in science and technology.
Of the many duties that police perform, crime investigation is the one that is the most complex. Crime solving is a discipline, which is a confluence of law enforcement, deductive reasoning, and medical science. The police equipment used for crime solving is also, likewise, a strange combination of widely differing things. Police might need heavy equipment to gain access to the crime scene by breaking open a door or a window. They might also need a fine dropper to suck up some blood at the crime scene, or a finer tweezers to pick up a single hair from the surroundings. All this makes the police equipment necessary for crime solving an extremely diverse one.
 A posse of police entering the crime scene will need all routine police equipment like gun, holster, gun belt, knives, baton, helmet, armored vehicles, and equipments like sledge hammer or lock breaking tools if the place is locked or barricaded. Besides that, there are many items of police equipment specially needed for exploring the crime scene and gathering evidence. These will include magnifying glasses, powerful flashlights, fiber brush for collecting small samples of evidence, fingerprint kits for lifting fingerprints intact from the crime scene, and self-sealing evidence bags of various sizes among other things.
Audio and video equipments for recording the evidence at the crime scene; digital and conventional cameras for photographing the place; notebooks, pads, and pencils for taking down the notes; and laptops for more detailed note-taking; will also be essential items of police equipment when police are investigating a crime. Since investigators cordon off the crime area and seal the interiors of a building where the crime has taken place, police equipment will also contain markers, ropes, nails, metal or wooden bars necessary for cordoning off, and the machinery to operate them.
Another category of police equipment necessary at the crime investigation scene is related to explosive detection. There are see through sprays that help in checking the contents of packages without opening them. Metal detectors can also be part of police equipment while checking baggage that are under suspicion. Where a vehicle is suspected to be involved in the crime, police equipment carried to the crime scene will also include window tint testers.
Where drug involvement is suspected, police equipment will comprise of narcotics tests kits and special pouches for collecting drug samples. Sophisticated test kits will have test facilities for a wide variety of drugs like marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, barbiturates, ecstasy, the entire range of opiates, and many other drugs. Police equipment in these cases will have some similarities to hospital equipment.
Besides these, police equipment at a crime scene will include communication tools like radios, pagers, phones, and even facilities for video conferencing to make further help available at short notice and to interlink the available evidence to parallel evidence that could help in providing more clues.
In short, heavy machinery, medical equipment, exclusive forensic equipment, sophisticated communication equipment, all combine to form the right police equipment that is necessary for crime investigation. And all these are besides the body armor and weapons, which we acknowledge as routine police equipment.
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