How law enforcement handles homicide cases

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Homicide cases happen rather infrequently in Warren County.

When one does happen, though, it often causes concern within the community.

Keeping that in mind, law enforcement officers work tirelessly to solve the case, which isn’t as easy as some people might think.

“It’s not just as simple as pulling up and saying, eh, this doesn’t look right,” said Ronnie Ward, Public Information Officer for the Bowling Green Police Department.

There isn’t really a model or “one crime fits all” type procedure for officials to follow, either.

“It absolutely matters as far as what the circumstances are of the death that dictate how long crimes are processed,” Ward added.

These aren’t cases that can just be solved the day of, too. It takes both a large amount of time and resources to investigate such complicated matters.

“There’s so much to it,” said Ward. “We can’t process a homicide scene in 15 minutes with commercials. This is something that takes hours and hours and hours to do.”

When there are so many moving parts to the process, it’s vital that each department cooperates with each other to help put the pieces together to solve the case.

“Good communication between us, to the supervision to the detectives to the crime scene processors to the police officers so that everybody is working together,” Ward said.

Ward mentioned how gathering all the information for the case and making a timeline and ensuring they get all the facts of the case right can be extremely challenging. It’s not the most difficult part of the case, though, according to Ward.

“We have to do our job,” he said. “We have to figure this out. In doing so, we have to go have hard conversations with people.”