Scotland Yard CSI Tries His Hand At Oklahoma Real Estate

Friday, March 2nd 2007, 10:04 am

By: News On 6

The chief of Scotland Yard's crime scene investigation and drug unit traded in service to her majesty to move to Oklahoma. News on 6 crime reporter Lori Fullbright reports he gave up supervising 1,500 CSIs and began a career in real estate.

Graham Ford was a well-respected employee of Scotland Yard for 28 years. His wife Janet also worked there in Customs until one day, during their commute, they were in a devastating car accident and decided to re-evaluate their lives. They wanted to live in America, so Graham applied for jobs and got one with the OSBI in the Tahlequah lab. It was quite a transition.

"Trying to understand the English language as spoken by Okies is hard, it may take awhile,â€ said Ford. â€œAnd I'm a city boy, grew up in London, so going from a city of seven million to a town of 15,000 in Tahlequah was a shock, a cultural shock."

After having a bad experience buying a house the couple decided to try real estate. Graham left the OSBI after four years and went into real estate full time with his wife. Eighteen months ago, he got a call from the government, they asked if heâ€™d use his forensic expertise in the war in Iraq, he said yes.

"Doing a lot of work on IED's, bombs, to id the terrorists, and we did quite well on that, and it's still going on now, just need a lot more people than what we've got," he said.

Graham just got back in January, and now heâ€™s consulting on major U.S. crime cases. He believes shows like CSI are good for recruiting people to the job, but are bad for creating unrealistic expectations for juries.

"People who are guilty are getting off because the jury thinks if there's no forensics, they must be innocent, but unfortunately, that's not right," Ford said.

Graham and his wife say no matter how they ended up here, Oklahoma is now home. They plan to stay and become U.S. citizens.