How To Search A Dumpster

One of the F4F readers posed this question to me and I thought it would make an interesting post. I have written before about criminals using trash cans to dispose of evidence. Sometimes they do it out of habit or routine but most of the time criminals think that disposing of a body or other evidence in a dumpster is the best way to get rid of it. Truthfully, CSIs routinely look in all trash cans at the crime scene or surrounding area. They will likely even search dumpsters around the suspect’s home and work (and in between) or anywhere else they may frequent. This can include a school, girlfriends house, or relative’s neighborhood. Sometimes police get called by someone who finds the evidence while using the dumpster. This can include scavengers, garbageman, or other users just throwing out their trash.

Searching a dumpsters sucks. It is one of the least desirable tasks assigned to a detective or CSI. Most of us would sooner attend an autopsy.  Maybe it’s the fact that the garbage is in a small enclosed space. Or maybe it’s that you never know what you’re going to encounter. You might “dive” in looking for a used condom and come up with a dead body!  You also run the risk of getting stuck with a used drug needle or rusty nail. At the very least you’re going to smell like garbage and, at worst, look like you lost a food fight!  Trash can also be very unstable and it’s pretty easy to slip and tumble while trying to walk or stand on it.

There are a couple of ways to search a dumpster. If you’re looking for something relatively small you may just have one person standing inside handing bags or boxes out to another CSI. The items can then be spread out over new, clean, tarps to be examined and photographed. If you’re lucky you’ll find the item your looking for right on top but I was never that lucky.  Removing a body is a bit more complicated. Most Medical Examiner offices won’t have the facilities to store and sift through a dumpster. If the body is just laying in the trash the CSI will probably just bring a body bag into the dumpster and place the victim into it. The bag is then sealed and hoisted out of the dumpster. This technique will minimize the amount of contamination that could occur during the removal of the body (not that it won’t already be contaminated with trash).

If the dumpster has been emptied into a trash truck your problems have just been amplified a hundred-fold. The trash truck is really just a much bigger dumpster on wheels. Much of the trash may be compacted but hopefully your characters will get to it before then. If not, expect the evidence to be heavily damaged by crush force. It may still be valuable as evidence but the damage may be extensive enough to minimize its value for reconstruction. If the evidence makes it all the way to the landfill you may have months of work ahead of you but I’ll save that for a later post!