It is a time of change in metro Atlanta. Southwest metro is growing rapidly and Union City is a part of that equation. Designed to meet current and future law enforcement needs, Union City has formed its own crime scene investigation unit headed by Criminalist Caspar McBurnett.

The growth of Union City in recent years is matched by the much larger number of people moving through the city each day to work or travel. And as with any city, increased numbers of people bring an increase for the potential for criminal activities and the need for a variety of law enforcement personnel to respond to those incidents.

Police Lt. Lee Brown cited two significant reasons for creating a crime scene unit in Union City. Those reasons revolve around giving detectives the chance to do a more thorough job while minimizing the risk of charges in court that evidence was contaminated.

“Up until now the detectives have processed the crime scenes. Often times we get information on the scene that needs to be acted on immediately and because of the responsibility of needing to remain on the scene and processing that information, they cannot stop what they’re doing and chase down those leads. Having a crime scene unit frees them up to do that work,” Brown said. “Also, it’s always better to have one person, or as few people as possible, handling physical evidence. That’s because the more people that handle the evidence, the more people that you’ve got to bring into court to testify that they’ve handled it.”

As the city’s crime scene investigator, McBurnett serves both as crime scene investigator and evidence custodian for the department. Any evidence taken by officers is routed to McBurnett for documentation, processing and storage.

“All evidence eventually goes through here,” Brown said. “McBurnett is the only person, by policy, that can take it out or take it to court or to the state crime lab, though she does process a lot of the evidence here in our evidence processing room.”

Portions of McBurnett’s training will include internships with Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Scene Unit and Georgia Medical Examiner and other training opportunities.

McBurnett is nothing short of upbeat about her new job. Though new to this end of law enforcement, the enthusiasm she brings to the job is unmistakable.

“All this still seems unreal to me. I had no intention of having a career like this. But the door opened for me. You see this on TV, but I didn’t know it was a real job,” McBurnett said. “But I’m doing this now and I’m having a lot of fun learning as much as I can. Every detail is important.”

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