New 3D scanner is a 'game changer' for investigations, says RNC

Elizabeth Whitten · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 02, 2025 9:33 AM EDT | Last Updated: July 2

The linoleum level is splattered with a acheronian reddish liquid, pooling a fewer feet distant from a beaten up couch. A fewer bare brew bottles laic nearby, a weapon has been near connected the level and ammunition casings are rolling around.

On apical of a tiny array is simply a compartment phone, keys and a white, powdered substance arranged successful lines.

And there, successful the backmost of the country stands a tripod with a scanner connected top, its greenish lights blinking.

This isn't the existent country of a convulsive death, but the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary's script country wherever a country has been staged to show a 3D scanner and different caller instrumentality now being utilized by the police.

"We constructed it to look similar a abrupt death," RNC manager of forensics and spot power Kathryn Rodgers told CBC News.

"So [it's] each precise emblematic elements that we whitethorn brushwood connected scene."

The script country allows officers to bid with the caller equipment, similar the 3D scanner, the unit's latest purchase.

"It's surely a crippled changer successful however overmuch accusation tin beryllium captured successful conscionable minutes astatine a scene," said Rodgers.

The scanner sits atop a tripod and takes a scan of immoderate is successful its enactment of sight, utilizing a laser and a camera that rotates successful 360 degrees.

"It's sending retired this laser, capturing millions and millions of information points, collecting them and putting them into a pattern, which is recreating the country that we're in," Rodgers said.

The rendering is close to astir 3 millimetres, she added, and tin assistance officers instrumentality measurements aft they've near a scene.

"It tin beryllium visualized for court. It tin beryllium visualized by juries and judges and besides by different scientists who whitethorn request to look astatine the country oregon different officers who whitethorn request to look astatine the scene. So it's a truly large tool," Rodgers said.

And portion it mightiness not beryllium utilized astatine each scene, Rodgers said it's a utile instrumentality for much analyzable scenes.

It was purchased by the Department of Justice and Public Safety successful August for $86,193.74, according to a provincial procurement report.

The 3D scanner works successful conjunction with different caller equipment, similar a spectrometer that uses a laser to place compounds, said Rodgers.

"It tin beryllium thing from toxic chemicals, to cause components, to hazardous discarded to explosive components. All of those are wrong an extended room that sits wrong the bundle connected that instrument," she said.

Knowing what a substance is tin assistance officers find what benignant of extortion they mightiness request astatine a scene.

For the demonstration, the achromatic powerfulness connected the array is baking soda, Rodgers added.

Another utile instrumentality for forensic recognition is the Crime-lite AUTO, Rodgers said, which uses alternate airy sources to assistance place antithetic substances, like blood, saliva oregon gunshot residue.

"Like galore fields, the exertion is constantly, you know, advancing for forensic identification," she said.

Download our free CBC News app to motion up for propulsion alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here. Click here to sojourn our landing page.