Police photographer

A police photographer is a professional photographer who is employed by a law-enforcement agency, such as a police department. They are not members of a municipal police force, but serve rather as civilian support staff. They are often utilized to take photographs of crime scenes, including the bodies of murder victims, as well as any evidence that may play an important role in the investigation including murder weapons, footprints, personal affects, clothing, etc. In modern processes, the term applied to this art form is called forensic photography.

On the Showtime television series Penny Dreadful, a police photographer was called to the scene of a gruesome murder in Spitalfields in England on September 22nd, 1891 to photograph the dismembered remains of a woman and her seven-year-old daughter, Charlotte.