Bloodstain Pattern Awareness for Patrol and Investigations

You do not need to be a forensic analyst to read a bloodstain scene. You need to know enough to protect what matters, document what you see, and give the experts something to work with. This 1-hour course covers bloodstain pattern awareness from the patrol and detective perspective. Idaho POST-certified.

Bloodstain evidence is fragile. The officer who walks through it, parks a cruiser near it, or fails to photograph it before it is disturbed may not know what was lost. This course covers what patrol officers and detectives need to recognize at a crime scene so the evidence survives long enough to matter.

What This Course Covers

• How blood behaves when it leaves the body: velocity, angle, surface, and the patterns each produces
• Recognizing high-velocity versus low-velocity spatter and what each suggests about the event
• Cast-off patterns, transfer stains, and void patterns: how to spot them and why they matter
• Scene preservation priorities before analysts arrive
• Photography and documentation standards for bloodstain evidence
• How bloodstain evidence is used in reconstruction and prosecution
• Common scene contamination errors and how to avoid them

Who This Course Is For

Patrol officers first on scene and detectives managing homicide and violent crime investigations. This is not lab-level analysis training. It is the working knowledge that keeps evidence usable and investigators credible when bloodstain questions come up in court.

Course Details

Bloodstain Pattern Awareness (BPA) gives patrol officers and detectives a working understanding of what blood evidence tells you at a crime scene and what your actions in the first minutes can preserve or destroy. 1 hour. Idaho POST-certified. $40.

Course Modules

Module 1: Blood Behavior Basics. How blood moves, strikes surfaces, and creates distinct patterns based on velocity, angle, and surface texture. This module establishes the foundation for reading a scene accurately without a forensic background.

Module 2: Pattern Recognition at the Scene. Impact spatter, cast-off patterns, transfer and contact stains, and void patterns. What each one indicates about position, movement, and sequence. Practical application for the first responder and the detective walking a scene.

Module 3: Scene Preservation and Documentation. Your job at a bloodstain scene is not to interpret it for the jury. It is to hand an uncontaminated scene to the analyst and a solid photo record to the prosecutor. This module covers documentation protocols, photography standards, and the most common officer-caused contamination errors.

Module 4: BPA in Investigation and Prosecution. How bloodstain evidence is used in case reconstruction, the role of BPA analysts versus patrol documentation, and what investigators need to understand when BPA findings come up in court testimony.

Accreditation

This course is certified by the Idaho Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council. 1 credit hour. RTI's full Bloodstain Pattern Analysis course carries IAI-approved hours for analysts pursuing certification at that level.

Most law enforcement training exists because someone needed to fill a POST requirement. You've sat through that training. You know exactly what it looks like.

RTI courses are built by working investigators who got tired of watching officers fail in the field because their training never matched reality. Every module is grounded in current forensic science, tested against real case outcomes, and built to hold up in court, not just in a classroom.

No rubber-stamp certificates. No recycled slide decks from a decade ago. No instructors whose only qualification is that they once attended the course they're now teaching.

If you do the work, you'll leave with skills you can use on your next shift.
That's the standard RTI trains to.

Is this the same as the full Bloodstain Pattern Analysis course?

No. This 1-hour awareness course is built for patrol officers and detectives who need working knowledge of bloodstain evidence. RTI's separate BPA course goes much deeper and carries IAI-approved hours for analysts pursuing that credential.

Do I need a forensic background to take this course?

No. The course is written for investigators, not forensic specialists. If you can read a crime scene, you can get value from this course from the first module.

How does this connect to RTI's Homicide and Death Investigation training?

Bloodstain Pattern Awareness is part of the homicide cluster. It pairs directly with the Homicide course, Death and Decomposition, and Wound Identification to give investigators a complete scene-reading skill set.

Is this available for agency-hosted in-person delivery?

Every RTI course is available for in-person agency delivery. Contact RTI to discuss scheduling and logistics for your department.