Meet the ‘Angels’ Cleaning Baton Rouge Crime Scenes | Crime/Police

It was an extreme mess that former police detective Larry Douglas said stuck with him more than any other death scene he had seen.

In 1995, a 16-year-old killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun on a ranch in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The evidence covered the teen’s walls, ceiling and waterbed.

As other officers left the home, Douglas found himself alone with the boy’s mother.

“Who’s going to clean this up?” she asked. Douglas couldn’t tell her at the time because he wasn’t sure either.

When members of law enforcement investigate a violent crime, they are only responsible for collecting evidence related to that crime. The coroner is only responsible for recovering the bodies for autopsy.

To remove everything else – blood splatters, entrails, stains and odors from a recent death – victims’ families must call a crime scene cleanup service.

“That’s where we come in,” Douglas said.

Xtreme Cleaner

In 2003, Douglas gave up full-time law enforcement to open a crime scene cleaning business in Baton Rouge with his wife, Amber Douglas.

Today, Xtreme Cleaners employs over a dozen cleaners, operates four trailers and performs more than 600 cleaning jobs per year.

“We like to say we do everything a cleaning service wouldn’t do,” Amber Douglas said.

Their offices and warehouse are surprisingly cozy. On the wood paneling, Halloween decorations mix with certificates of training that Larry Douglas completed.

The lobby where Douglas meets his clients is more like a living room, which is fitting since employees say Xtreme Cleaners is the only “mom and pop company” that does this type of work in Baton Rouge.

Xtreme Cleaners has had a 10-year contract with the Baton Rouge Police Department to clean BRPD vehicles and holding cells, which are often covered in blood, vomit or inmate feces. This is a far cry from what Douglas described as “the old days,” when officers or inmates themselves were expected to wipe down vehicles, potentially exposing themselves to biological hazards in the process.

The job

Crime scene cleaning or biohazard remediation involves removing blood and entrails from a room, disinfecting the surfaces and objects within, purifying the air, and tearing up often contaminated carpets, floors, and walls.

This is the process of transforming a space defaced by violence and death into a safe living space for people.

However, it’s not just scenes of bloody murder. Half of the cases handled by Xtreme Cleaners involve bodies found long after a natural death.

The clearer jargon for these cases is “Decomp”.

“People think we go in and wipe it down and then we’re done,” said Morgan Phillips, a team leader for Xtreme Cleaners. “That’s definitely not what we do.”

When a body decomposes, it swells with methane gas and liquid. These fluids then seep into furniture, carpets, insulation and even foundations. They also cannot be disinfected with household cleaners as these only spread around the biohazardous material.

“We have to remove everything that is soaked. So that’s the flooring, the baseboards, the drywall, the baseboards, maybe even the concrete slab,” Phillips said.

Bloat flies feed on human remains, lay their eggs, and spread waste throughout a home. Maggots also burrow into the carpet and migrate several meters away from where the body originally fell.

According to Douglas, the smell of decomposition permeates everything. Sometimes almost all the possessions in a house have to be thrown away.

Not doing a thorough cleaning poses many dangers. Generations of disease-carrying flies can live on a single body; Mold can grow in damp carpets or insulation, and hepatitis can live in spilled blood for weeks.

Jobs can be dangerous even when there is no body present.

Hoarders’ homes often need to be cleared of compacted trash, syringes, and animal feces.

In homes that once housed a meth lab, carcinogenic fumes can linger long after the lab has been dismantled.

“We have that “I come across just about every scenario imaginable,” Larry Douglas said.

Put on

To protect themselves from these dangers, cleaners have standard equipment that they wear when working:

• Disposable coveralls designed for both chemical and biological hazard exposure
• Rubber boots
• two pairs of gloves, one of which is attached airtight to the wrist
• an adapted face mask with a respirator

Cleaners must search through two or more sets of overalls and countless pairs of gloves on a single job.

On humid days, sweat can become its own problem, said Jami Haws, a 10-year veteran of Xtreme Cleaners.

“You can take off your mask and throw it away,” she said. “In the summer you have to pour out your boots before you can put them back in the trailer because otherwise they get full.”

The cleaners are also equipped with a variety of EPA-certified disinfectants that you can’t find in a regular store.

These disinfectants are distributed using an electrostatic sprayer, which allows the mist to stick to surfaces longer.

Biohazard areas are also treated with chemical degreasers that break down the oily remains of a decaying body.

Cleaners then use power tools such as reciprocating saws to dismantle furniture, floorboards and drywall.

Finally, the air inside a home also needs to be treated. Cleaners are equipped with air scrubbers that suck in oxygen through filters before returning it to the home. Ozone can be pumped into a building overnight to remove odors.

Biohazard is then packed into specially marked bags, recorded in a manifest and transported for incineration.

A hidden industry

According to Bryan Warcholek, operations manager for Aftermath Services, which also operates a store in Baton Rouge, no special license is required to operate as a crime scene cleaner in Louisiana, but biohazard cleanup companies remain responsible to agencies such as OSHA.

Cleaners must also be certified by the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration.

Douglas warned that some cleaning companies could pose as biohazard remediation companies. In his decades in the industry, he said he has seen companies that fail to properly and legally dispose of biohazards and companies that pay fines to victims’ families.

He said the easiest way to have peace of mind is to check whether the company is an approved provider for your home insurance.

Most home insurance policies cover crime scene cleanup, but families often don’t know they have this option.

“It’s definitely something most people don’t think about until they need to,” Haws said.

Both Douglas and Warcholek agreed that the industry’s biggest problem is that people don’t know their services exist.

“We hear these horror stories, neighbors came over and helped… or the father and mother had to clean up their own child,” Douglas said. “We can help you. You don’t have to do it yourself, and we’ll take care of it somehow.”

Louisiana operates a crime victim compensation fund that covers crime scene cleanup for those who cannot afford it. Up to $2,500 can be awarded, but only in homicide cases.

Those working with the fund suggested families contact their community’s sheriff’s office and inquire.

Last responders

In addition to their dangerous work, cleaners must also care for the victims’ families in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic death.

Almost every cleaner said they had been called an “angel” at some point during their job.

“Our main goal is to improve the bad situation,” Haws said. “We are here to help as best we can to make it go away. We clean, fix, hug, whatever they need to get through that day.”

Just as every cleanup is different, every family grieves differently.

“I had a job where a mother’s daughter had committed suicide and she was praying for me,” Phillips said. “Throughout all her hard times and tragedy, she prayed for me.”

Cleaners are on call 24 hours a day, year-round, and Haws recounted how he would head out in the middle of holiday celebrations to clean up suicides or kidnappings.

Cleaners often meet for dinner after work to discuss the meeting, and Xtreme Cleaners offers its employees access to free consultations.

“We’re a family here,” Phillips said. “You may cry on the way home, but we can endure it at work because we are like a safe haven for the family.”

Cleaners also ask if there are any items the family would like to salvage. They found everything from a pair of shoes for a little boy’s funeral to an engagement ring buried under pounds of hoarded trash.

Phillips said she tries to go beyond just cleaning biohazards and always tidy the house so that it is as presentable as possible when the family returns.

“Take a deep breath, calm down, we will work together,” Haws said of what you should do after a death in your home.

“Then,” she said, “call biohazard immediately.”