What Are the Requirements for Crime Scene Cleanup?

If you are looking to hire a crime scene cleaner to deal with a crime scene on your property, you might wonder what requirements are necessary to become a crime scene cleaner. When you hire someone, what qualifications and certifications should you look for to know that a company is a legitimate crime scene cleaner?

The answer probably won’t make you happy if you’re trying to decide which company to hire: there are no official requirements to become a crime scene cleaner. Essentially, anyone can advertise and provide this service with no qualifications or experience.

The industry of crime scene cleaning is currently handled by a patchwork of regulations that can make it hard to figure out which firms are properly qualified and which ones will take your money and give you no assurance of quality results. This means that you have to be vigilant in making your choice: you have to look carefully at the qualifications of the firm you choose to hire.

What Is Involved in Crime Scene Cleaning?

Before you can choose a crime scene cleaner, you must know what is involved in the task. Crime scene cleanup is not routine cleaning around the house that you can trust to a maid. It isn’t like cleaning up an apartment after tenants move out. It isn’t the same as cleaning up after a wild party. This is a specialized cleaning task that requires specialty cleaning services.

In order to successfully clean up a crime scene, your cleaner needs to be able to:

• Identify potential hazards – You need someone who can look at a crime scene and know what potential hazards exist. This is more than just seeing blood: you need someone who knows how to respond if that white powder is talcum, anthrax, or cocaine.
• Isolate an area for safety – Sometimes cleaning can disturb potential hazards with the potential for contamination. You want someone who can isolate the area to keep you and your family safe.
• Handle hazardous materials – After identifying potential hazards, your cleaner must know how to handle them in each case. This goes beyond blood and other potentially infectious materials (OPIM): it can include hazardous chemicals that might be present or used in drug manufacturing. This includes the legal transport and disposal of these materials.
• Know when materials are clean – Your cleaner needs to have some method to determine when a surface is adequately cleaned. In some cases, this might be testing, but in other cases it is following industry-standard techniques to achieve cleanliness.
• Know when materials can’t be cleaned – Just as important is knowing when materials can’t be cleaned adequately and might have to be disposed of in different ways.

If you don’t have confidence that a firm can achieve all these tasks, they are not the right one to hire for your crime scene cleanup.

How to Choose a Crime Scene Cleaner

As we noted before, there are no regulations about the qualifications necessary for a crime scene cleaner. However, there are proposed regulations that can give you insight into choosing a crime scene cleanup company.

One proposed regulation for crime scene cleanup proposes that crime scene cleaners must be familiar with and achieve the standards laid out by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC) S540: Standard for Trauma and Crime Scene Cleanup. This standard covers many essential aspects of crime scene cleaning, including:

• Safety and health
• Biocide and antimicrobial technology
• Equipment and tools
• Structural remediation
• Contents remediation
• Containment and disposal of waste and sharps
• Confirmation of cleanliness

Although there are many other aspects of the standard, these are the ones that matter most to you as a homeowner or business owner. You want to make sure that anyone you hire to clean up a crime scene on your property is familiar with the safety and health aspects of crime scene cleanup. You also want to make sure they understand the disinfection technology to eliminate contagions and have the equipment and tools to do it properly. You want to know that they can clean both the structure of the building and its contents – or know when it can’t be cleaned.

Any cleaner you hire should know how to contain and dispose of the waste related to the crime scene, since this is one aspect that could get you in legal trouble. In Montana, the law says that “a person may not generate, treat, store, transport, or dispose of infectious waste in a manner not authorized.” The law notes that infectious waste includes human pathological waste, human blood, and items soaked or saturated with blood.

Finally, you want to make sure that anyone you hire knows how to confirm the cleanliness of the crime scene and isn’t simply stopping when the area “looks clean.”

Choose Alpha Omega for Your Crime Scene Cleanup

If you are looking for a professional to handle crime scene cleanup at your property, Alpha Omega Disaster Restoration is ready to help. We are IICRC-certified restorers, which means that we adhere to the high standards of the organization, including for crime scene cleanup. We have highly trained employees with over 50 years of combined experience in the industry. We utilize the right tools to get the job done right and get it done quickly. We offer 24/7 emergency services, so we will come to your property immediately and get to work right away if you need it.

Alpha Omega offers competitive pricing. We deliver the best disaster restoration services at a fair price. We also work with your insurance company, documenting the damage and our procedures so there will be no delays or reductions in your claim due to poor documentation.

If you need crime scene cleanup in Billings, Billings Heights, Laurel, Columbus, Red Lodge, or any of the surrounding areas, Contact Alpha Omega Disaster Restoration to get fast and thorough cleaning of your property.