4 Hour First Officer Response to Death Investigations
Notice
- This event meets the criteria for specific mandated training
- Non members please click here to contact us to request access to online registrations.
Date: Friday, October 16, 2026
Time: 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Time: 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location:
Fairview Heights Police Department
Instructor: Nicholas Novacich, Madison County CoronerFairview Heights Police Department
10027 Bunkum Road
Fairview Heights, Illinois 62208
Driving Directions
Fairview Heights, Illinois 62208
Class Limit: 50
DOWNLOAD FLYER
Course Goal:
Provide first responding officers with the knowledge and skills necessary to properly assess, secure, and manage death scenes while preserving evidence, ensuring scene integrity, and supporting successful investigations and prosecutions.
Performance Objectives:
Provide first responding officers with the knowledge and skills necessary to properly assess, secure, and manage death scenes while preserving evidence, ensuring scene integrity, and supporting successful investigations and prosecutions.
Performance Objectives:
- Explain why the first 5 to 10 minutes of a death investigation are critical to scene integrity and case outcome.
- Identify the first officer’s core responsibilities: protect life, establish control, secure the scene, document observations, and notify appropriate personnel.
- Demonstrate the ability to recognize scene indicators that suggest natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal, decomposed, skeletal, submerged, burned, or otherwise unusual death scenes.
- Apply proper scene-control procedures, including perimeter establishment, scene entry logging, witness separation, and contamination prevention.
- Describe the distinction between police responsibilities and the coroner or medical examiner’s authority regarding cause and manner of death.
- Produce a defensible initial response plan that supports forensic processing, search warrant needs, and courtroom admissibility.
