Police diving

Forensic diving is professional diving work related to the gathering of evidence for use in investigations and legal cases. Police divers may be called in to investigate and recover evidence in plane crashes, submerged vehicles, boating accidents, suicides, homicides, swimming fatalities and other incidents and crimes. Forensic divers may face a number of environmental hazards from underwater structures and infrastructure, debris, industrial pollution, medical waste, organic hazards from various sources, shifting currents, poor visibility, hypothermia and hyperthermia, for which special equipment may be required to mitigate the risk. Other specialised equipment could include locating devices, access equipment, and transportation. Underwater recovery efforts may include the use of trained dogs, which can detect human remains underwater at depths as great as 150 metres (490 ft) feet in ideal conditions. Qualifications and training for forensic divers are additional to departmental physical and psychological requirements. Training may include instruction in stress management, media relations and teamwork.[3]

Submerged evidence can have similar forensic value to evidence found above the water. Items recovered from immersion have been used as evidence in many cases where they have provided identifiable blood traces, fingerprints, hair and fibers, and other trace evidence. There are advantages to having a regional underwater investigation team available, but doing it well requires planning, administration, an adequate budget and due consideration of occupational health and safety issues. The working environment for underwater investigation includes a range of contaminated and inhospitable sites. Depending on the location and local procedural requirements, the teams may contain volunteers, firefighting and rescue personnel, or law enforcement personnel, and in some cases a collaboration of all of these. It is preferable that all members of an agency dive team be full-time, trained members of that agency for reasons of liability, training, policy and procedures. In some jurisdictions the required minimum certification is a recreational certification, in others an occupational qualification and registration may be stipulated. All members should be medically fit to dive, properly trained and competent to perform the tasks they may be assigned, and trained in matters of crime scene documentation and evidence handling and processing in an underwater environment.[4]

Dominica Marine police, maneuver under a Barbadian coast guard ship looking for an inert training explosive

"Public safety diving" is a term coined by Steven J Linton in the 1970s to describe underwater rescue, underwater recovery and underwater investigation conducted by divers working for or under the authority of municipal, state or federal agencies. These divers are typically members of police departments, sheriff's offices, fire rescue agencies, search and rescue teams or providers of emergency medical services. Public safety divers (PSDs) can be paid by the agencies employing them, or be non-paid volunteers.

Due to the conditions in which accidents may happen, or where criminals may choose to dispose of evidence or their victims, police divers might need to dive under hostile environmental conditions which can include:[5]

• In canals and rivers with strong flow
• In harbours and shipping lanes
• In intake pipes, sewers, culverts, and other enclosed spaces
• In bodies of water requiring high angle rope access
• In water towers with potable water
• Sludge, mud, debris or thick vegetation
• Under ice and in frigid water
• At night or with low visibility
• In rough seas and weather
• In water contaminated with toxins or parasites

As these dives may have to be done at short notice, department diving supervisors should be aware of the conditions and local hazards of the likely sites within their areas of operation, so that appropriate measures can be available when their team is called out.

In the US, diving training agencies such as Emergency Response Diving International (ERDI), the National Academy of Police Diving (NAPD), Team Lifeguard Systems, and Underwater Criminal Investigators have courses to train divers in public safety diving.[7][8][9][10]

UCI (Underwater Criminal Investigators) was founded in 1987 to provide professional underwater criminal investigations training to the public safety diving community.[10]

The National Academy of Police Diving (NAPD) was formed in 1988 by a group of police divers to create a national standard for police and public safety diver training and certification in the US.[11] It has helped provide training for police officers, fire departments, military divers, and environmental investigators in the following locations: North America, Central America, Russia, Australia, and the Caribbean.

In South Africa, public safety diving and police diving fall under the Diving Regulations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993, and such divers are required to be registered as commercial divers by the Department of Employment and Labour. Their basic diver training must be done through registered commercial diving schools. As they are professional police officers, they are also trained in police procedures. [12]

The Australian Diver Accreditation Scheme (ADAS) includes accreditation for police diver training.[13]