Criminal justice graduate student Danielle Dykens broke down in hysterics outside her fiance's apartment in Spartan Village as officers looped yellow "Michigan State Police — Do not cross" tape around the scene.

Through bouts of sobbing, she screamed profanity at the officer trying to calm her down. Dykens even pushed her way past officers into the room with the body, hoping to touch her fiance for the last time.

Her fiance, a Resusci Anne dummy consisting of only a head and torso, is also used in CPR training.

Dykens was one of 13 MSU students voluntarily role-playing in faux crime scenes for a homicide training program co-sponsored by the Michigan State Police and MSU School of Criminal Justice. Thirty detective and investigator hopefuls from about 24 police posts and departments all over the state underwent a four-day police officer training program.

The program is used to show participants how to identify what is considered evidence, collect it, ask questions from witnesses or victims, obtain warrants, present evidence in court and, ultimately, solve cases.

Six crime scenes in various Spartan Village buildings were created for the exercise and included dummies as dead bodies, weapons, fake blood and other evidence. Parking space-sized piles of dirt with tire tracks and unknown shoe prints were created outside the apartments for students to analyze.

Part of the focus of the program, which has been at MSU for about five or six years, is to get people from several different departments to work as a team and meet as many experts as they can, said Michigan State Police 1st Lt. John Slenk.

"The purpose is to make a street cop as smart as they can be," he said.

Residents in the area were told about the exercise beforehand and signs were posted, Slenk said.

The empty Spartan Village apartments are ideal for training, since evidence can be found easily, said Career Development Coordinator for the School of Criminal Justice Tim Homberg.

The role-players — who must assume roles such as cleaning crews, friends and fake reporters — act from scripts and have information about the crime that students must obtain through questioning, Homberg said.

The role-players don't voluntarily offer the information and try to contaminate the scene, making it more challenging for students, he said.

Nicole Lisabeth, a public affairs intern for the Michigan State Police, role-played a reporter continually asking for information and trying to get on the scene. If she went past the police tape, she could be arrested, she said.

Dressed in knee-high black boots, black fishnet stockings, white hot pants and a shirt that read, "If you love me, buy me a beer," graduate student Dykens played Penny Pusher, a "working girl." In Dykens' scenario, she comes home to find her boyfriend dead, becomes hysterical and must try to intentionally interfere and contaminate the scene.

"Part of the skit is you want to reconnect with the body," Dykens said. "Really, I was messing stuff up — touching everything."

She said when students weren't looking, she walked through the dirt containing tire and shoe tracks. She also spit out her gum and dropped a cigarette butt, she said.

"They basically tell you to be overly hysterical," Dykens said. "The more you overdo it, the more real it is."

Criminal justice senior Laura Hays, another participant, said other MSU students who've previously role-played in the training told her it was fun. Hays, who is considering a career as a prosecuting attorney, also said crime scene procedures are things she needs to know and can learn by being part of the program.

"If people ask you what you've done in a job interview, you can say you've had some hands-on experience," she said.

"You don't have to be a police officer to want to be here."

Students of the homicide-training program went through two days of classroom instruction to learn from forensic professionals in various fields, including entomology, anthropology and pathology.

The third and fourth days of class are devoted to collecting evidence from a faux crime scene, transporting it to be analyzed and presenting it to a prosecutor and in court.

Officers also said it was a great way to meet and have contacts in departments from all over the state. The MSU Department of Police and Public Safety and the East Lansing Police Department did not participate.

Michigan State Trooper Heather Johnston, a student in the training program, said the in-depth and hands-on training for homicide investigations was thoroughly informative.

"The stuff here is pretty realistic," she said. "It's what we would see at a regular crime scene. It tells you how to apply the techniques to everyday cases, too."

Slenk said it's important to know what to do at a scene so it isn't contaminated. In some cases he's worked on, people keep walking through the scene or even move the body, he said.

"It's a gory job, but somebody has to do it," Slenk said. "Might as well do it right."

Lindsey Poisson can be reached at poisson4@msu.edu.