Australian Federal Police share history for National Science Week

The 28-year-old hotel receptionist sustained severe head injuries after being assaulted at the property by an unknown assailant.

Footprints, fingerprints, blood, hair and a cigarette butt were all collected from the crime scene and would later be used to convict the man found to be responsible.

It was the first serious crime scene Constable Ian Broomby had been involved in. In his early 20s, Constable Broomby had not long graduated alongside six others and been given the role of police photographer.

"I'd come here in '59 and done our basic training - it was the first class that went through locally - and I was doing general duties work," he said.

"I had a bit of an interest in photography, processing of photographs and developing film the old way."

It was a small Commonwealth Police Force responsible for law and order in the ACT at the time, policing the 50,000-odd Canberrans who called it home.

Gruesome murders weren't too common in sleepy Canberra, so Detective Sergeant Ted White of the NSW Police, Scientific Unit, was called in to assist with the investigation.

Broomby attended the Keys' home in the early afternoon, having photographed a suspicious fire at the Civic Telephone Exchange on the police-issued Super Speed Graphic 4x5 that morning.

The evidence collected that day would later convince a jury to sentence Daniel Norris Nichols, a 45-year-old cook lodging at Mulwala House, to be hanged - a sentence he would later appeal in the High Court.

Broomby and White were both called on to provide crime scene evidence at the trial.

For the young Constable, the case sparked a curiosity in science that would be crucial in developing forensics for the Australian Federal Police.

Broomby travelled to Melbourne the following year to undergo detective training at the police college on St Kilda Road, learning crime scene management, forensic science and fingerprinting.

He said it was a busy time for the Victorians, who were leaders in many aspects of police science, including alcohol detection.

"I was one of the lucky ones that, in the development of the breathalyser system, was allowed to have two or three beers and get my breath tested," he said.

On returning to Canberra, Broomby set up a system that enabled fingerprints to be searched locally before being forwarded to Sydney.

In 1965, Broomby and a colleague, Constable Phil Baer, became the Scientific Section, giving rise to the installation of a bullet recovery tank in their new office inside the City Police Station the year after.

The Australian Federal Police was achieved by merging the Commonwealth Police, ACT Police and the Narcotics Bureau in 1979. The Australian government recognised the need for an integrated organisation to deal with national security and terrorism in the wake of the Sydney Hilton hotel bombing.

Its creation led to the establishment of a purpose-built facility for forensic officers in 1980, following the construction of the Police Services Centre in Weston.

Not long after, a partnership was formed with the Australian National University, giving rise to the creation of the Polilight - a portable, high-intensity light source used to detect evidence including fingerprints and bodily fluids.

Current Chief Forensic Scientist, Sarah Benson, said the relationship between the federal police and academic institutions exists to this day.

Dr Benson said working with the best academics in fields like quantum computing allows them to plan for the future of policing, despite the commercialisation of the technologies being some years off.

Based out of the Majura Forensics Facility established in 2016, Dr Benson works alongside 200 forensic specialists, including document sciences, firearms identifications, marine and DNA profiling.

From humble beginnings, the AFP is now providing forensic support here in Canberra, as well as nationally and internationally.

Dr Simon Walsh, National Manager of the Operational Science and Technology Command, said crime has changed since he got his start in the 90s, when it tended to be on the streets rather than in the shadows.

"We talk about hybrid crime now too, where it exists in a hybrid of both the physical and digital world," he said.

"It's pretty unusual to have any kind of criminal investigation that is not a blend of each.

"The victims and perpetrators are still members of our community, but often the means by which they are targeted or do harm can be digital, meaning the evidence and our examination could be predominantly digital."

Dr Benson said evolving traditional forensic disciples, such as document sciences or the chemistry lab to make sure they were still relevant in that world, was ongoing.

"We do say that most crimes that are committed in the digital environment or online, somewhere along the line, leave a physical footprint, or physical evidence," she said.

"So making sure that we still maintain those capabilities to be effective in that digital world, or to intersect with what's happening online is absolutely critical.

"It could be a face image search, or a series of images, or fingerprints or hand prints that are showing up online through the commissioning of a crime or the seizure of a device.

"Our members in those traditional disciplines still need to be able to identify and compare using their traditional techniques, although it might be in a digitised way with databases and searching."

Dr Benson said the country underwent some major reforms a number of years ago, when people stopped writing things down and creating documents and diaries.

"We saw a decline in services and requests for things like handwriting examination and indentations, which go back to some of the early roots of forensic science, and some areas were shutting that capability down," Dr Benson said.

"We tried to reinvigorate and ask 'well, what are the crimes that we're seeing committed?'

"How are they doing it now and how can we change what we do?"

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The AFP has been sharing its history as part of National Science Week, running from August 13-21.

Dr Walsh said a crucial element of his work is predicting where science will take the force in the future.

He said counter-terrorism and extremism offered a challenge for those in the labs as well as those doing more traditional police work.

"People who are motivated to something that drastic and dangerous will go to extensive lengths to execute what they're trying to do," he said.

"It's a really demanding area, staying connected with some of those threats from a science and technology perspective."

Over in Fisher, an 84-year-old Broomby has hung up the camera, retiring as Assistant Commissioner of National Investigations in 1993.

He's waiting for an invite to the Majura lab he laid the groundwork for in the 60s.

"They're busy people out there," he said.

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