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What to Expect from A Crime Scene Cleaner --
A crime scene cleaner should arrive on time. Most usually, a crime scene cleaner will not know that his or her employer received your business through a county employee. Your crime scene cleaner will clean without being encumbered by ethical questions. A thorough cleanup of blood and other potentially infectious materials will occur. Most crime scene cleaners know how crime scene cleanup means detail cleaning as well as demolition at times.
Crime scene cleaners often remove blood and other potentially infectious materials from homicides, suicides, and unattended deaths. Usually one or two victims of violent crimes leave behind more than enough work for one crime scene cleaners. Times change, though, and crime scene cleaners begin finding multiple crime scene victims. This last weekend (today's September 8, 2011), four people were shot to death in Nevada City, Nevada. A restaurant, three victims and all military, died from AK-47 rounds. Another person died outside of this "IHOP" restaurant. A similar shooting occurred years ago in San Diego, California.
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Now we approach September 11, 2011. Ten years ago we witnessed the largest crime scene cleanup in our nation's history. It happened on that day my wife called me at work. A TV came on and I watched the wonder of television broadcast terrorism across our continent. A TV receiver a few feet from me and my clients forever etched the sudden demolition of the Twin Towers, cultural icons.
Over a thousand victims died that day in and around New York's Twin Towers. Crime scene cleanup would take years. Even today, first responders continue dying from lung diseases and other conditions caused from that day's environmental contamination. Hazardous material cleanup at the Twin Towers dwarfed anything like it in our history, short of Pearl Harbor. Decomposition cleanup continued for many months.
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Following the San Diego crime scene cleanup, newspapers questioned the manner of this shooting. "How did the shooter get hold of a gun?", many wrote. Years passed and it seemed that each new year brought a new twist on this type of mass killing with firearms. Newspapers came to turn simple homicides into media events like they turn celebrities into super-beings.
But has crime scene cleanup, the work of crime scene cleaners, changed all that much from centuries before. And what of today? What might we expect in a truly uncertain future as the promise of endless crime scene cleanup emerges?
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Ideology
An ideology consists of a system of beliefs. An ideology stands on its own in witness to social, cultural, and historical changes as it moves forward. An ideology moves forward embedded in its human convoy as humanity chooses one ideology from others. Which ideology chosen typically reflects one's social, cultural, and historical settings, their conditions of existence. For crime scene cleaners, ideology involves some sort of a religious upbringing. A crime scene cleaner may choose not to have religious leanings, but just the same, a crime scene cleaner carries an ideological predisposition to act.
How does this translate politically, considering that the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers comes under a political umbrella?
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It translates like this. The Coke brothers, two billionaires born into billions, held a seminar for billionaires as they build a war chest. A "war chest," yes. Because, in their ideology, something that resembles Ann Rynd's "Objectivism," in part, our President Obama resemble Sad dam Hussain place in the world.
David Coke introduced Governor Chris Cristi to the billionaire audience. Might we imagine Chris Christi received sizable contributions from this billionaire crowd. "He is my kind of guy," David Coke said. Christi was not quick to make his relationship to this billionaire crowd known.
David Coke said, "Only a few weeks ago that New Jersey would be freed from the Greenhouse emissions" rules, to paraphrase. (Brad's Blog) We might guess that the Coke industries has heavy investment in chemicals and oil. Clean energy has much less consideration in their scheme of things, their ideology. Of course, Medicare has no place in their ideological bent. I'm writing about crime scene cleanup, the type that killed and kills many first responders to the Twin Towers that terrible day. Ten years back I had no idea a crowd of billionaires planed the demise of government "entitlements" for working people. Oil, not people or the environment, tweaks this movement for no billionaires left behind.
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Crime Scene Cleaners
When it comes to crime scene cleaners, an overused metaphor goes something like this:
Crime scene cleaners of the world, unite. You have nothing but your chains to lose.
In the context of what passes for civil society these days, crime scene cleaners at least have a job, at times. At times they're on-call 24/7/365. At times they have too little work and earn too little money. Considering the type of work that they do, they should earn much more. A more decent arrangement for crime scene cleaners arises when they own their own crime scene cleanup company. This way they receive a larger share of the profits. After all, they're the ones that make it all happen.
Crime scene cleanup works best for crime scene cleaners when a small business model arrangement leaves the non-working owner out of the picture. This type of work should pay an extraordinary amount of money for crime scene cleanup, but it does not. I'm alluding to the fact that it's not fare to do this work for less than $100 per hour.
But a cleaner cannot earn $100 per hour unless they own their own crime scene cleanup company. Finding homicide cleanup, suicide cleanup, and unattended death cleanup work takes a direct connection county cronies. Or, it takes many dozens of crime scene cleanup web sites. it's that simple.
Cronyism
One cannot compete with the county government monopolies. Their employees' control over crime scene cleanup grows absolute. In Orange County, California, their control shows a determination similar to a parent's protection of their children. Competing with such determination cannot go on for most crime scene cleaners.
Like this writer, hundreds of web sites ranking well bring too few opportunities to clean. It's government fraud that brings crime scene clangers into a world not of their making. Had they a free and level playing field, absent tax payer supported civil servants, then they would arise in droves like carpet cleaners. They would own their own Orange County crime scene cleanup company; their equipment would belong to them and their families, just like their profits. Then their labor in horrific working condition would earn a more fair wage.
It's that simple. Our government creates either a communist-like or fascist-like working world as found in the words of my crime scene cleanup business.
What can be done?
As one of two Orange County crime scene cleaners working free of local government, I see a solution. Simply, in all places accessible to the public, post informational signs like the following:
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Notice
County employees do not refer to private companies. Please do not ask.
County Board of Supervisors
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A similar message would do well on county documents.
Soon, affordable death cleanup will have similar ideas. Some ideas may develop on its pages, too.
Message for Cleaners
19th Century -
Crime scene cleanup work exposes cleaners to a special group of people, bereaved families. Every family has its differences. Every family has similarities. In our business, it's best to have some sort of idea have different individuals respond to crime scene violence. Crime scene cleaners may at times take some the "heat" as family members emote.
Keep in mind that it's not you. It's their shock and grief talking. Say as little as possible on the job, but do act if a sounding board should an individual wish to discuss violent death, crime scene cleanup, your crime scene cleanup company policies, and so forth. Do not involve yourself in religious or philosophical discussions.
Below I have written extensively on personality types. These serve as models for human behavior. They explain nothing. The do bring to mind the many types of characteristics we find in our own lives. We find these types among our clientele as well. I hope that these models in some way breach that chasm between client and crime scene cleaner.
Character Types
A person, which now includes corporations, may want you to do something wrong. Don't.
A person may set out to correct your beliefs. Ignore them.
A person may wish you to experience emotions more or less intense than theirs. Say something like, "These feelings are what they are. They are the real me." No one can condemn another person for their feelings.
A person may wish wish for you to change you into a copy their their ideal self. Go about your business because this person will never reach satisfaction in others.
Diversity means differences. Honor diversity in others rather than seeking out their seeming flaws and afflictions. Some people may be sick.
Here's an example of what could and did happen to a new crime scene cleaner. Assigned a small decomposition job in an apartment, this young cleaner could easily have completed his work with 2 hours. Decontaminating, scrubbing, rinsing, and vacuuming the fluid for sanitary sewer disposal defined the scope of this job. Simple assignment, easily and safely performed tasks within healthy person's ability.
What happened turned out as a very expensive job for the crime scene cleanup business owner.
The apartment building's owner arrived in time to badger this young cleaner. Rather than allowing work to proceed as a cleanup, the owner turned it into a major demolition. Before he was done abusing this young cleaner, the cleaner had removed the entire kitchen floor.
What happened? Our crime scene cleaner lost his scope of work. His self-esteem came under attack and he succumbed to a sick person's manipulations. "Sick" is the correct word, too. Human mental health problems, sickness, psychopathology, begins with the sick person manipulating others. In the end, a distortion of the real person emerges as the manipulater tries to transform othres.
20th Century
We find this manipulative behavior at work in murder-suicide cleanup work. It turns out that the perpetrators had a long history of manipulation. Those around them seldom met their expectations. In the end, murder victims were not malleable enouth for the perpetrator. Historically, physicians and philosopers explaed this behavior as an "internal" crazyness.
Then in the 20th century, the new modern age brought Western Civilization to the forefront of modern psychology. Now, instead of blaiming an internal sickness, demons and such, and external cause came into our way of thinking.
The Russian scientist and experiment, Ivan Pavlov, showed how important environment becomes in behavior. The American scientist and experimenter, John Watson, then that conditioning made humanity what it becomes. Watson claimed that he could "shape" an infant into an adult as he wished, given the time and conditions. So here we reach an extreme understanding of human behavior from what came before. For a crime scene cleaner this may not seem like much. Place these ideas into a mental sticking place, and they begin to help us understand what may happen when people do crazy stuff.
At about the same time that all of this took place, we began to believe that people have more similarities than differences. We began to belive that people have a single motivation. Once known, we would understand human behavior.
Another approach quite different from the above approaches arose, but it originated thousands of years before Hippocratese, the great Greek physican. Carl Jung said that what matters most in human temperment arises from instint-like behavior. He called these "introversion" and "extroversion." To these he included four, super-structure type, psychological functions:
- thinking
- feeling
- sensation
- intuition
Each of these types becomes a preference for each human being. To place a lable on all of this, he used terms like "psychological types" to help us understand these very deep types.
Others had written similiar ideas. The ancient Chinese book, Secret of The Golden Flower, has a theme similar to what Jung called "architypes." In that great book we find mandals representing different human and universal characteristics. Later writers, including John Steward Mill and Henry Murry would write their own take on these architypal ideas.
Mill's worked out an "ethology" approach while Murry worked out a "personology" approach. These books would remain on library shelves for generations. The "paradigm shifts" of 20th century psychology had turned attention to Pavlov, Watson, and others, including Freud and his followers. Something had happened with these new approaches. They showed, or at least claimed, that human beings can change and do change. They showed that environmental conditions do have an influence over our behavior.
Meanwhile, the internal schools of psychological thought, like Jung's archetypal psychology, held the notion that internal structures do influence our overall behavior. This idea follows in a more discrete and specialized way.
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