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KIRKSVILLE, MO. -- You’ve seen the tape before, the yellow “CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER” tape.

Usually police departments put it up while they work on a crime scene, but have you ever wondered how they collect and process their evidence?

That’s what students in the Kirksville Citizens’ Police Academy learned about in week 8 of their program.

Kirksville Police Detective’s Justin Jones and Jeremy Cordray brought in several different tools they use when gathering their evidence from a scene.

Everything from their cameras they take pictures with, log books, evidence bags, to their fingerprinting kits.

The students even got the chance to collect their own finger prints.

“we did some fingerprinting to show how difficult it is sometimes to get a full print and what it takes to do that as well as some practical purposes of it and some of the limitations of fingerprinting,” said Det. Jeremy Cordray.

Jones and Cordray even showed how they preserve certain types of evidence before sending it to the lab.

“We also demonstrated the alternate light source which basically allows us to use different frequencies to identify biological fluids and trace evidence we need to collect and send off to the lab,” said Det. Cordray.

Students says its classes like this that help them get a better understanding of what it really takes to process a crime scene.

“All the crime scene investigation information has been really interesting and actually seeing it hands on gives you a better understanding of what they do,” said student Gwen Perrachione.