Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Jun 26/00) - A tiny drop of blood or an appropriately placed fingerprint is all Cpl. Harry Harding needs to place you at the scene of a crime.

Trained in forensic identification, Harding can take the smallest of clues -- such as the root sheath of a single strand of your hair -- and turn it into concrete evidence.

"Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not," said Harding, referring to the range of leads suspects leave behind. Every once in a while, Harding's work is done for him.

"I went to a break-in at an alfalfa dehydrating plant. They broke in and ... he left his cheque-book. It had his name, address, telephone number. It was just a matter of going to his house, knocking on the door and arresting him," he said.

But because not every crime is so easy to solve, Harding, an RCMP officer based in Iqaluit in the Forensic Identification section of the V Division, said he has a number of steps to follow in his work.

Usually one of the first officers to arrive at a crime scene, Harding said the first task at hand is to ensure the area is cordoned off to prevent people purposely or accidentally tampering with evidence.

His second priority is to videotape and photograph the area surrounding the crime scene, followed by taking a photographic record of the inside of the crime scene.

Photographs are crucial, he said, when seeking a conviction against a suspect.

"The idea of the photographs is to bring the scene to the court for a trial either before a judge or judge and jury so they can see what was there," said Harding.

Once the scene has been documented on film, Harding said his next move is to look for other kinds of evidence to piece together what happened.

The training he received -- an eight-week course 10 years ago and a fascination for the field before he even joined the police force in 1975 -- provided the foundation for that detective work.

"Inside, you look for fingerprints, anything the suspect might have left behind; sometimes hair or fibres from their clothing might have been left behind," said Harding.

Different kinds of crime require him to look for different kinds of clues, perhaps the most graphic of which is the evidence at the scene of a murder.

"You have to tailor it to what's there and look for exhibits," he said. "If it's a bloodletting scene ... there will be blood splattered in different places and the patterns can be interpreted to explain what happened."

Harding said his experience over the years has taught him to get used to dealing with blood, and while murder isn't an easy crime to investigate, he has to concentrate on his work.

"I think it develops over the years," said Harding.

"You have a job to do, and you kind of get used to it, to a degree. Some haven't been easy, but it's like a doctor, you get used to blood and seeing that type of thing."