HANCOCK COUNTY — The team is only called into action when it’s a worst-case scenario and they must figure out what went wrong when a person dies or is seriously injured in a vehicle crash.
The Hancock County Fatal Accident Crash, or F.A.C., Team, is a group of 12 highly trained law enforcement officials from agencies throughout the county who are tasked with determining the cause of fatal crashes or those that cause severe injury.
They are reconstruction experts, going through painstaking details — from a car’s speed at impact to whether the brakes were applied — to gather every bit of information to help determine the cause of the crash.
All team members go through specialized training.
The team has been busy already in 2021, having investigated two fatal accidents, one on New Year’s Day and the other Jan. 17.
The calls — which can come at any time — are never easy. But as they deal with the human toll of the destructive power of collisions, they also apply the science, similar to the way investigators look for clues at crime scenes.
“Our job is to be enhanced fact-gathers as compared to an officer who is just on the scene,” said Maj. Bobby Campbell, chief deputy of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department. “We bring a scholastic knowledge to the table.”
Campbell has been a part of the F.A.C. Team from its earliest days and actually started working on a crash reconstruction team in 1999. As far as anyone can recall, the F.A.C. Team became an official unit around 2007.
Campbell has seen quite of bit of change through the years.
“We used to use strictly measuring tapes and certain mathematical formulas to determine the speed of a car in an accident,” Campbell said, referring to a key detail in reconstructing a crash.
Not anymore.
Officials now have state-of-the-art computer software into which they can upload data and actually see how the crash unfolded on a computer screen.
Capt. Robert Harris of the sheriff’s department is a crash reconstructionist and has been part of the team since 2007. He’s also the only person in the county who can download electronic data from the electronic control modules from vehicles after a crash.
“I download the ‘black boxes,’ as the public knows them,” Harris said. “It is actually the airbag control module, powertrain control module, rollover sensor, etc…”
Every crash tells a story.
Some of the newer cars and “black boxes” can tell Harris everything from speed to engine rpms and even the seat position. The data can even tell a trained officer if the steering wheel was turned left or right.
The information helps the team understand the status of the vehicle upon impact.
“I like the science behind the team,” Harris said. “I like being able to take all the puzzle pieces from the crash to find out what happened.”
Much of the data they collect can be used by highway engineers to make the roads safer.
The plan for the team is simple. Once they arrive at a crash site, they check on the people involved, then stabilize the scene to prevent the destruction of any evidence.
“That was something we had to teach others who might arrive before us like the fire department or other officers whose first instinct is to push everything off the road and get it back open,” Harris said.
After stabilizing the evidence, team members photograph the site and start marking the crash site for a scale diagram. Once information is gathered, they utilize diagram software to figure it all out.
“All the measurements we take, we can plug them into a program,” Harris said.
While the data from each accident scene is processed differently, most crashes are solved within a few weeks unless blood work or other chemical tests are needed for the people who were involved. That type of evidence is processed through a state lab, which can take months.
Cpl. Ryan Chappell of the Greenfield Police Department has been a reconstructionist for the F.A.C. Team since 2013.
Chappell has always been good at mathematics and physics and at one time wanted to be an engineer, even attending Purdue University for a while to study electrical engineering.
As a crash-site investigator, he was inspired by his mentor, Derek Towle, a former deputy chief at the Greenfield Police Department who helped establish the F.A.C. Team.
“He was the best reconstructionist I ever saw,” Chappell said. “He taught me to pay attention to the smallest of details on cars.”
Chappell has taken numerous police technology and management classes to be better prepared to assess accidents.
“It’s just something that has always interested me and is also a good job to get into when you retire, working for an insurance company,” Chappell said.
As a crime scene investigator for GPD, Chappell is adept at analyzing blood stain patterns, which includes multiple mathematical formulas to answer questions. These are the same type of skills he uses as a reconstructionist of crash scenes.
“I like looking at the evidence at hand and saying ‘Hey, I’m gonna see if I can figure this out,’ and that goes through your mind before you even talk to anyone there,” Chappell said.
The hardest part of the job for Chappell is dealing with the victims. The work always involves death or life-changing injuries for the people involved.
“I’m thankful for a good support team at home,” Chappell said. “It makes a huge difference.”
He recalled the death a few years ago of a young woman who was struck and killed while riding her bicycle on U.S. 40. A semi-trailer truck carrying concrete beams hit her with one of the beams.
Chappell later found out she was going to college to better herself.
“She had kids at home, and it’s just things like that, that just stick with you,” Chappell said.
Sheriff Brad Burkhart praised the team, calling them an important unit for community safety.
“The officers and deputies (who are) part of this team are smart guys,” Burkhart said. “There’s a lot of math and equations and things they have to know and understand to do the job.”
The work can be far-reaching. Data is used for insurance purposes, and trucking companies use information to report driver safety statistics at the state and federal level, for example.
“There is a lot of money involved in accidents,” Burkhart said. “While insurance companies can do their own investigations and do, when it comes to collecting appropriate data, the right information comes from the scene where the F.A.C. Team collects information, data that stands up in court.”
Chappell said it’s good to be able to pass along the information they gather to state officials who then use the information to make travel safer. While he personally is not a fan of the readjusted lanes along West Main Street in Greenfield, he noted the realignment has cut down on accidents in that area. The decision on the road “diet,” which added bicycle lanes and cut driving lanes to two from four, was based in part on crash data.
“The data we collect does help make a difference,” Chappell said.
Like Chappell, Harris noted it’s their job to find the answers after a fatal crash and speak for those who can’t tell anyone what happened.
“Everybody thinks crashes are accidents, but we have to explore the other possibilities,” Harris said.
Crashes can be intentional, like a road rage incident or perhaps a suicide accident. It’s why Harris said the county is fortunate to have a team of law enforcement officials who are willing to determine what really happened when there is a fatal crash.
