Real life crime investigation. Will the real CSI stand up?

Every now and then I sit back with my wife and enjoy watching
an episode of CSI.

Horatio and his team of Miami crime experts in their dressy
outfits and police Hummer always seem to catch the bad guys in
the end.

Their modern science and brilliant minds go beyond the average
person's grasp, which perhaps is why they appear to have such
great success.

Most episode the team clear the good guys and tag the bad guys
with some evidence - usually DNA related - hair, blood, saliva,
skin, prints, etc.

The bad guys unintentionally leave calling cards at the scene
of every crime - and that calling card puts the identity to who
committed the crime.

If you look beneath the Hollywood surface, each show reveals
that identity is more than the traditional plastic ID card.

But don't take that as reality. Real life forensics take longer
than one television episode to solve a crime. Just recently, the
Toronto Star reported on the Ontario crime labs backlog for
example. The lab had so much evidence to process and too few
people to do the work that it takes months to get to one item.
It wouldn't be surprising if most other crime labs are just as
overloaded. And that's before the evidence validity is debated
in court!

Real life crime takes time to solve. And according to the UN
1998 - 2000 Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal
Justice Systems, 23,677,800 crimes were reported in the U.S.
alone. That's a lot cases to process!

When identity theft strikes, file a police but don't expect the
law to investigate your case. You may also need to report the
identity theft with others (hopefully listed in your response
plan), even though many of them don't investigate either.

In real life, overworked law enforcement can't get around to
every case - even when modern science can link evidence to
criminal identity better than ever today.

With identity theft, the authorities might never catch the
culprit.

Meanwhile, I'll continue watching Horatio save the day.