How Does a Crime Scene Cleaner Spend a Workday?

The Function of a Crime Scene Cleaner

Crime scene cleaners are professionals who are trained to clean up a property after a violent crime or death, returning it to its original condition. They do not deal with the removal of dead bodies, nor are they involved in the investigative or legal process. Being a crime scene cleaner requires unique personal characteristics including, importantly, the ability to withstand working under emotionally grueling conditions, handling blood, other bodily fluids and other human remains.

Types of Jobs

A typical day for a crime scene cleaner might begin with attending to the scene of a homicide or suicide. Other types of calls might include cleaning up after a body has been left to decompose for an extended period of time before discovery. Typically, cleaners work in teams, and jobs can take anywhere from just a few hours to several 16-hour days.

Types of Equipment Used

Before heading to the crime scene, the cleaning team will check supplies to ensure necessary equipment is in working order and packed for transit. Equipment brought to each scene will include: bio-hazard waste containers (heavy duty bags and/or hard plastic), standard cleaning supplies such as mops and sponges, an ionization machine to remove odors from the air, disinfectants, wet vacuums, putty knives and other small scraping tools, protective gear for the crew and more.

Cleaning a Scene

Before entering a scene, the crew dons full bio-hazard suits to avoid contact with any potential pathogens or bio-hazardous materials. The manager or owner of the cleaning company first makes a walk-through to assess the extent of necessary cleaning and quotes a price to the property owners.

Cleaners, suited in full bio-hazard gear including head-to-toe coverage and respirator, begin by removing large areas of contamination. In some cases, they take out carpet, or even wall sections, with razor blades. Crime scene cleaners clean every area, from floors and ceilings to furniture and small items. This can involve such activities as scraping off skull or brain fragments and wiping off and disinfecting blood-spattered areas.

Cleaners replace any carpet, tile or wall that has been removed and disinfect the air to remove offensive smells. They may use an ozone machine and hospital-grade disinfectants for this purpose.

The removal of bio-hazardous waste is subject to strict regulations. Cleaners place all such materials in approved bio-hazard disposal bags or hard plastic containers, after which they load it for transportation to a bio-hazardous waste disposal site.

Although crime scene cleaners may occasionally work on two jobs in one day, typically this isn't the case as most scenes require many hours, if not days, to clean and disinfect completely.

At the end of the day, a crime scene cleaner must remove and disinfect all equipment and remove and properly dispose of his suit. Cleaners are also responsible for filing reports on their activities, which may be used for insurance purposes.

Resources

• American Bio-Recovery Association
• How Crime Scene Cleanup Works