500 officers to get special DVI training

The University of Dundee is to provide the training and facilities that will accommodate a national standard for all officers involved in disaster victim identification (DVI).

The complexities of victim identification received renewed attention after the Asian tsunami and the July 7 bombings, leading to the creation of a National UK DVI Team. Organised by ACPO, the Dundee course will see up to 500 officers trained to provide a national strategy and capability for disasters at home and abroad.

The Unit of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the university has won the substantial contract for the training, the first of its kind, and will provide the facilities and network of teachers.

The course, scheduled to begin in July, is being run by Professor Sue Black, a leading expert in forensic anthropology with extensive experience in DVI after deployments to Kosovo, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Egypt and Thailand.

She said there will be a number of police related teachers coming from Centrex and a number of scientific, medical and technical teachers coming from the other partner organisations of the UK DVI, such as the centre for international forensic assistance (CIFA).

The university is expecting a cohort of 45 students to go through the course programme each time and Graham Walker, UK DVI Commander, wants to realise the training of 500 officers over a two-year period. He said selection will be on a proportionate basis around the UK. “The UK DVI will set selection criteria and then ask forces to interview and select locally.”

Prof Black described how the course is to have three phases. “The first phase of teaching will be virtual, so that every officer on the UK DVI will be able to log on as a registered student of Dundee and enter a virtual learning environment. We will give them the information needed for a good theoretical basis of body recovery and mortuary practices.”

The three-month virtual learning phase will examine the credibility of the candidates without exposing them at that stage to practical training in the arena of DVI.

After sitting an online examination, officers will then progress to phase two, the ‘face-to-face’ recovery course run by Centrex. In addition, they will attend Dundee for a week long residential course.

Prof Black said: “During that week we will set up a temporary mortuary. We are an anatomical department and permission has been granted from Her Majesty’s Inspector of Anatomy for us to train using anatomical material; those on the course will be carrying out their training in an environment that is as realistically close to true deployment situations as possible.

“They will go through every step of the process as in a real mortuary scenario, including the appropriate paperwork produced for a mortuary technician to allow the body to be released. They will photograph the body, look for personal effects and take prints etc. The students will then be taken to the different stations where the processes of the scientific procedures occur with, for example, the forensic pathologist, anthropologist, odontologist, radiographer and tissue sampling experts.

“We will bring together the documentation, and discuss the identification commission. They will have a complete hands-on experience throughout the whole process of what goes on within a mortuary.”

Phase three DVI physical exercises will be organised by Mr Walker. He said the exercises will be both strategic and practical. “There will be recovery scenarios to make sure the officers’ skills are maintained. It’s not a case of if the next disaster will happen; it’s a case of when. The training will make sure we are kept in a state of readiness. Although the exercises will lack the reality of hostile conditions, we will replicate the issues and make sure officers are familiar with the associated paperwork and software systems that are unique to DVI.”

At the end of phase three, there will be two streams of officers completing the