Warning for graphic images ahead!
A new Channel 4 series is set to shine a light on a group of unsung heroes who step in when the unthinkable happens, crime scene cleaners. Launching at 10pm on Monday 30 June, Crime Scene Cleaners offers a rare and raw look at the professionals who help restore order after chaos, confronting the aftermath of murders, suicides, drug dens and other traumatic events.
Filmed on both sides of the Atlantic, the 10-part series gives unprecedented access to specialist cleaning crews across the UK, from Kent and Reading to Somerset, Newcastle and Cardigan, and further afield in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Among the cleaning experts featured in the series is Lauren Baker, a trauma cleaning expert based in Kent, who brings years of experience to the most harrowing and dangerous scenes. She said:
“It’s tough when you walk into an unattended death. Especially if you’ve got a decomposition going on as well. And mentally, it does affect you. It takes a strong mind to be able to go in and clean something like that…. We could be walking into a bloodbath. We could be walking into needles everywhere. You can have faeces, you can have bodily fluids, we don’t know what we’re walking into.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s been times when I have sat there and had a little cry. Because I have genuinely felt for that person, and I’ve put myself in their shoes and it is tough. It is tough and that’s what people don’t realise. They really don’t. They think we’re just a cleaner… we’re not just a cleaner, by no means. I do always think about the people that have passed, and it is really sad. You have to leave that at the job. You can’t take that home with you. It’s got to stay there. Otherwise, my mental health would deteriorate really, really quickly. So, I need to make sure I can protect myself.”
Tony Earnshaw runs a specialist cleaning service in Newcastle and has attended many high-risk crime scenes with his specialist team:
“We get called to all sorts of crime scenes, whether it be a sudden death, a murder, a stabbing, an assault… It can be quite gory at times, can be quite challenging and it can be dangerous.”
In the series, Tony and his team attend a drug den in which over 100 used needles were discovered and cleared, in what he describes as one of the most dangerous and hazardous jobs they carry out:
“We try to use technology to mitigate any of the risks…. We would use drones on occasions where we know there could be a high risk of hazards, so needle sweeps… For somebody to purposely booby trap the property, I was quite shocked and quite upset really because this tenant posed a risk to our staff. These types of people, to generalise, have usually had a lot of run-ins with the police, so they’d find it amusing if a person was to stab themselves or infect themselves because they’ve put these needles on door frames – it certainly would be an intent to endanger life.”