Earlier this week, the Economist ran an interesting article discussing what is known as the “CSI Effect”.

From the article: In 2008 Monica Robbers, an American criminologist, defined it as “the phenomenon in which jurors hold unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence and investigation techniques, and have an increased interest in the discipline of forensic science.”

I have experienced “the CSI Effect” many times, although I never referred to it by that name. I usually refer to it by it’s other name, “I thought cops could do that but I guess they can’t.”

Back in the late 90s while living up in Spokane, Susan’s car was stolen. She went to work one day and lef ther purse in her car. Someone walked by the car (the footprints were still fresh in the snow) and smashed her car window to steal her purse. When they found her spare car key inside the purse, they came back and stole the car too.

Susan called the police, and then me. The police told her, “we’ll keep an eye out for the vehicle.” The car was a bright red Saturn SC2 with Oklahoma plates — you wouldn’t think it would be hard to spot in Spokane.

Our “CSI Effect” began almost immediately. I wondered why the police hadn’t looked at the footprints in the snow, and why choppers hadn’t been deployed to find the car. Ah, to be young and naive.

Four hours later, we — Susan and I, not the police — found Susan’s car. It was sitting in a grocery store parking lot, window bashed out. We immediately called the police and waited for them to arrive. When they finally did, they said, “Well, congratulations. See you later.” That was it! When we asked if they wanted to search the car for fingerprints and/or DNA, the officer looked at us like we had just suggested the car had been stolen by Elvis and we wanted Bigfoot to help in the recovery. In fact, the police were in such a hurry to leave that it wasn’t until after they left that we found four stolen purses in the trunk. When we called the police to report that, they said, and I quote, “bring them by if you get a chance.”

I wish I could say that encounter was a one time event, but actually, every single time I’ve been the victim of a crime, my experence has pretty much been the same. When my $2,000 car stereo system was stolen out of my car, I had hoped that they would gather fingerprints or do some investigation. Instead, they didn’t even come out to the house. They took a statement from me over the phone, and that was it. When my GPS got stolen out of my car a year or two ago, I didn’t even bother calling it in. When my sister’s home was burgled, and we knew who did it, the police still didn’t take fingerprints, talk to neighbors, or pretty much do anything from what we could tell.

I’m not a member of law enforcement so I don’t claim to know anything about investigating crimes, but I can relate when it comes to computer movies. I always get a chuckle when television detectives zoom in on a pixelated photograph to read a license plate and then click the “Clarify” button. Funny how my machine doesn’t have that button! Or when detectives in modern police dramas scramble to “trace a phone call”. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have Caller ID at this point — why doesn’t the police station have it? And when it comes to computer guffaws, I don’t know a single computer specialist who can sit through movies like Hackers or The Net, the scene in Independence day where Jeff Goldblum uploads a virus to an alien spacecraft, or any movie where you interact with computers using a virtual 3D interface without cracking up.

They can call it the “CSI Effect” — I call it, “Hollywood is not Reality”.