Police analysis shows CSI's real crimes

A news report from KHOU burst Houstonist's TV bubble this morning: It seems real-life police crime labs aren't really much like the ones on CSI.

KHOU had HPD crime lab director Irma Rios and DNA division head Vanessa Nelson check out an episode of the hit crime drama, and they found a few inconsistencies between the show and real life — for example, tests that the show presents as conclusive really aren't. But the biggest discrepancy, the HPD lab workers said, is in the timing:

"They have like bits and pieces correct, but not the whole thing. It takes a whole lot longer," said Nelson.

For example, tests are run and answers returned just minutes later in show time.

But in the real lab, "Real-life timeline to do a comparison test like that would be a week. And that's doing it quickly. That's only working that one case," said Nelson.

Add in all of the case load of a real lab, or in HPD's case, 300 murders, 700 rape investigations and you get, "Maybe a month. Two months. And that is assuming they could get the suspect DNA sample," Nelson said.

Just for that one test that looks like it takes an hour on TV.

Yeah, well, imagine trying to get people to sit through a two-month-long episode of CSI. Even with a liberal dose of crime lab drama, that would be hard to sit through. Rios and Nelson also pointed out that crime-lab shows never talk about the price of their work — the total cost for testing in the CSI episode they watched would be about $60,000, with equipment totaling more than $500,000.

The whole story seems kind of pointless. After all, who actually believes TV crime shows are 100 percent realistic? Apparently, you'd be surprised: More and more juries are reportedly deciding cases based on things they've learned from TV, and that knowledge isn't always right. In Massachusetts, KHOU reports, a jury acquitted an accused rapist because police didn't perform a test jurors had seen on a televison show — but a computer like the one used in the show doesn't actually exist. What next — will they try to tell us that Mike and Carol Brady weren't really married? Yeah, whatever.