Bill Harwood: How A Chemist Becomes A Cop
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2016
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a young chemist working for the state crime lab, Bill Harwood is unexpectedly called to a crime scene. Lt. Bill Harwood is the director of the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory. He has over 26 years of experience in forensics and law enforcement. Lt. Harwood began his career as a forensic chemist at the Crime Laboratory in 1989 after graduating from the University of Maine at Orono with degrees in Medical Technology and Zoology. He examined physical evidence and testified as an expert witness over the next 5 years. He became a Maine State Trooper in 1994 patrolling Kennebec and Lincoln Counties. He was promoted to Maine State Police Detective in 1998 conducting child abuse investigations for the Kennebec County District Attorney’s Office while also serving as a homicide investigator for central Maine communities. He was promoted to Sergeant of the Crime Laboratory in 2002. He supervised the Firearms and Latent Print units while also serving as the Quality Manager and Assistant Director until 2008. He was then promoted to Lieutenant in charge of headquarters Special Projects until his assignment as crime laboratory director in 2010. Lt. Harwood has served as a Crisis and Hostage Negotiator, Staff Sergeant Cadre Supervisor at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, State Police Emergency Response Team member for the Maine Emergency Management Agency and serves as the administrator of the Maine State Police Evidence Response Team.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientists the... |
| 0:06.0 | It felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I was so... |
| 0:09.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:15.0 | Hi, everyone, I'm Van Lilley, and welcome to The Story Collider, where we bring you true |
| 0:27.3 | personal stories about science. This week's stories from Lieutenant Bill Harwood. It was recorded |
| 0:32.5 | in March 2016 at Sea Dog in Bangor, Maine as part of the Maine Science Festival. |
| 0:38.3 | Apologies about the audio quality, but we thought this was an amazing story that you all would love to hear. |
| 0:49.1 | Hello, everybody. I'm glad to be here today. I want to tell you a story, and it maybe doesn't quite fit into the outfit that I'm wearing here today because I'm glad to be here today. I want to tell you a story, and it maybe doesn't quite fit into the outfit that I'm wearing here today because I am in uniform. |
| 1:00.0 | But I want to tell you a story about how a person who hates chemistry, I hate chemistry, and how I became a chemist. |
| 1:10.4 | Because I was a chemist at one point in time. |
| 1:12.5 | I haven't always been a police officer. |
| 1:14.8 | I don't know how many of you have taken chemistry in high school, probably a lot of you here. |
| 1:20.3 | And I have to tell you, there's still concepts of chemistry I just don't get today. |
| 1:24.3 | I don't understand the purpose of them and whatnot. |
| 1:26.6 | I think I have a genetic predisposition to not be able to understand chemistry. I don't know why. Malality, moles, |
| 1:34.6 | and Avogadro's numbers. Anybody here really understand Avogadro's number? Does anybody ever |
| 1:39.2 | heard it? You do. There's one person who understands it. I love math, so I still remember the number, but I, 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd. |
| 1:47.2 | I don't know what it means, but it's still in there for some reason 30 years later. |
... |
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