First, I really appreciate your discussion on this topic.

I am not against having a chapter that addresses incendiary devices. I do believe this information needs to be available to the investigator. May I suggest changing the title from Incendiary to Incendiary Devices.

To the average person, such as what you will find in the insurance industry and on juries, believe the term “Incendiary” is referring to a criminal act. The definition found in 921 is not as strong. I think the problem is by using this term the interpretation as to what it means is being left wide open.

If it is meant to refer to a criminal act, how does one determine a fire to be incendiary without knowing the motive and intent of the human involvement? This is where I am having difficulty.

I want to make sure I am understanding you when you say an incendiary fire. If you are saying that the meaning of incendiary has nothing to do with determining if there was a criminal act then maybe I can understand your meaning of the term. What I take it you mean is the same as the definition found in 921 for incendiary. To me I look at it a little different. I agree that at some point in the investigation there needs to be a determination as to human intervention causing ignition to take place. I feel I can do this by citing the facts as to how ignition took place without using a term to classify that process. I keep the ignition of the fire separate from the classification because the classification requires further investigation into motive and intent. If I have not undertook this portion of the investigation process, I keep my finding to the known facts.

Where it is obvious that if one finds separate and distinct origins or an incendiary device that one can say based on the evidence that there was human involvement that resulted in the fire taking place. As in my previous examples, there can be times when what one determines to be an incendiary device is insufficient evidence to say the person placing the device had motive and more importantly intent to cause a fire. Shooting off fireworks in an areas where it is illegal and those fireworks causing a fire would this not be an incendiary fire under the definition. Many relate incendiary to a criminal act. I guess the setting off of the fireworks was an illegal act but was the resulting fire nothing more than accidental?

As I said, some of the information contained in the incendiary chapter is relevant in assisting that the investigator. What I call the “Red Flag” topics has nothing to do with the methodology being used to determine the cause. I agree the chapter needs to be kept. All I am suggesting is that if the committee wants to get out of the classification business because the document does not give guidance to the investigator when it comes to determining intent, then the information addressing intent should be removed. All of what I am saying is the document needs to be consistent throughout.

I am basing these opinions on the intent of the committee and their reasoning for removing classification from the document. If this is their goal then the information as to motive and intent should be removed also. The committee stated the document does not cover how to determine intent. If this is true, then lets remove things like the red flags that relate to motive and intent. I am not saying it is wrong to classify the cause of fires. There is nothing stopping this from being done. I am just looking for a clean document that is consistent with the intent of the committee.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group