When grim scenes need a clean…
This month a new Channel 4 series brings viewers rare access into the extraordinary lives of professional crime scene cleaners, a group of unsung heroes who encounter people’s worst nightmares on a daily basis.
Pulling back the curtain on this vital work, the show follows expert teams in both the UK and the US through dangerous and difficult situations, as we get to know the characters behind the hazmat suits.
From dealing with the aftermath of murder, drug dens, burglaries and arson attacks, crime scene cleaners are hazardous material clean-up crews on-call 24/7 to some of the most horrific crime scenes and sometimes putting their own lives in danger. This elite group of highly credited specialists clean up the mess and help people get their lives back to normal after the most traumatic events imaginable.
Across 10 episodes, the series tracks teams tackling crime scenes from Kent, Reading, Somerset, Newcastle and Cardigan, and across the pond to Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Cameras explore the crimes that have been perpetrated from a unique point of view – the fall-out of the case, the clever cleaning techniques used by these specialist crews, the crimes behind the mess and the transformations undertaken – featuring a forensic psychiatrist, detectives and other forensic specialists who unpack the crime and analyse the scene.
Among the cleaning experts featured in the series is Lauren Baker, a trauma cleaning expert based in Kent, who brings years of experience to the most harrowing and dangerous scenes. She said:
“It’s tough when you walk into an unattended death. Especially if you’ve got a decomposition going on as well. And mentally, it does affect you. It takes a strong mind to be able to go in and clean something like that…. We could be walking into a bloodbath. We could be walking into needles everywhere. You can have faeces, you can have bodily fluids, we don’t know what we’re walking into.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s been times when I have sat there and had a little cry. Because I have genuinely felt for that person, and I’ve put myself in their shoes and it is tough. It is tough and that’s what people don’t realise. They really don’t. They think we’re just a cleaner… we’re not just a cleaner, by no means. I do always think about the people that have passed, and it is really sad. You have to leave that at the job. You can’t take that home with you. It’s got to stay there. Otherwise, my mental health would deteriorate really, really quickly. So, I need to make sure I can protect myself.”
Tony Earnshaw runs a specialist cleaning service in Newcastle and has attended many high-risk crime scenes with his specialist team:
“We get called to all sorts of crime scenes, whether it be a sudden death, a murder, a stabbing, an assault… It can be quite gory at times, can be quite challenging and it can be dangerous.”
In the series, Tony and his team attend a drug den in which over 100 used needles were discovered and cleared, in what he describes as one of the most dangerous and hazardous jobs they carry out:
“We try to use technology to mitigate any of the risks…. We would use drones on occasions where we know there could be a high risk of hazards, so needle sweeps… For somebody to purposely booby trap the property, I was quite shocked and quite upset really because this tenant posed a risk to our staff. These types of people, to generalise, have usually had a lot of run-ins with the police, so they’d find it amusing if a person was to stab themselves or infect themselves because they’ve put these needles on door frames – it certainly would be an intent to endanger life.”
Crime Scene Cleaners launches at 10pm on Monday 30 June or stream all episodes on Channel 4.
