It was a Sykesville man out walking his dog who discovered the    remains: a tibia here, an ulna there and the human skull    resting near the edge of an aging concrete drainage culvert. On    Tuesday afternoon, Carroll County Sheriff's Office Crime Scene    Unit Supervisor Jessica Bullock stood just outside the yellow    police tape while the crime scene investigators snapped    pictures and laid out yellow plastic tags next to the potential    pieces of evidence: a shovel, a pistol and a crushed can of    soda.  
    "They were dispatched to a 'suspicious condition,'" Bullock    said, referring to the state of the human remains. "The dog may    or may not have scattered some of the bones."  
    There was no real cadaver found on Tuesday, of course, and the    bones and other evidence arrayed on the grass outside    Sykesville Middle School on Tuesday afternoon were made of    plastic. This was a simulated crime scene, part of the    Sykesville Police Department's Junior CSI program, a four-week-long course    in crime scene investigation for middle school-aged children,    according to Sykesville Chief of Police Michael Spaulding.  
    "It's community outreach. It's involving our local kids     getting an opportunity to get to know them, and [them] to get    to know us," Spaulding said. "Hopefully it will inspire some of    them to pursue careers in law enforcement and to have fun."  
    The children in the program  mostly Sykesville Middle students    but some from other schools  had been coming to the program    every Tuesday since Sept. 9, learning team-building exercises;    basic techniques, such as how to lift fingerprints;    cybersecurity; and how to put those skills together to solve a    crime. Several police experts came together to help craft the    lessons for the program, Spaulding said.  
    "It was a joint presentation of a homicide investigator from    the state police, a detective from Baltimore County that does    the forensic sketches and a crime scene technician from the    Carroll County Sheriff's Office," Spaulding said. "The three of    them put their heads together and put on a mock crime scene and    ran through from start to finish the roles of the crime scene    investigator, the role of the investigating detective and    finally the role of the forensic sketch artist."  
    On Tuesday, the children were working mock crime scenes of    their own as a sort of final exam before a graduation from the    program. While one team was investigating the bones found by    the drainage culvert, another was inside the school, where they    examined an explosive device, eventually determined to be a    fake, inside a child's locker along with a threatening letter.    A third team was busy documenting all the pieces of evidence    surrounding the discovery of a human body in a trash can on the    side of the campus.  
    The information, and the way it was presented in the course,    was surprising to Sykesville Middle School eighth-grader    Marilyn Davidson, who said she had joined the program to see    whether law enforcement was something she might consider as a    career.  
    "I didn't think it would be this elaborate  I would expect    sitting down and being taught something and not actually coming    outside and actually doing it myself," she said. "It was    difficult in some parts because you have to get everything    together and make sure everything is perfect and ready."  
    At one point, Spaulding approached each of the teams and began    ducking under the yellow police line.  
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Sykesville police program gives kids a taste of crime scene investigation