The American Academy of Applied Forensics is headquartered at Central Piedmont Community College near Charlotte, North Carolina. Central Piedmont is committed to work force development as we adapt our comprehensive programs and services to meet the educational needs of a constantly changing, technically advanced and complex world.

The site for the Academy at the College’s North Campus includes a well-equipped forensics laboratory, a computer forensics laboratory, a mock court room, an auditorium and a state of the art 2,000 square foot crime scene facility for practical exercises. The crime scene facility houses fully functional replicas of a home, office and hotel room that are used to recreate real-life crime scenes during CSI training. We are able to teach students comprehensive crime scene processing, that is, collecting evidence in virtually any environment. For instance, the office setting will be used to recreate crimes that often involve computers and other electronic devices as part of our digital evidence program.

AAAF/CPCC has one of the nation’s most extensive digital evidence programs including one of the most advanced digital evidence teaching laboratories. Courses in each area are taught by the nation’s leading forensic experts in state of the art training laboratories and classrooms.

The goal of the academy is to offer the most advanced applied forensics training available to law enforcement and medicolegal investigative professionals. We provide investigative training from the crime scene to the courtroom. In the age of sophisticated technology, computers and other digital devices are frequently involved as either the target, the instrumentality or the informant of criminal activity. Digital evidence is becoming alarmingly vulnerable, leading to the exploitation of personal data at enormous costs to every facet of our society. Some have said that 80% of all crime has digital evidence. In a world with 900 million people on the Internet, with over one billion cell phones in the US alone, the future of successful law enforcement training will depend on their expertise with digital evidence and electronic investigations. AAAF training will continue to improve and expand to meet the technological needs of law enforcement.

Although AAAF has been in existence only four years, the program offers one of the most comprehensive applied forensics, or crime scene investigator (CSI), training curriculums in the country. AAAF offers over 52 different classes with both basic and advanced applied forensics courses in the areas of general forensics and digital evidence. General forensics focuses on gathering and processing physical evidence while the relatively new area of digital evidence focuses on seizing and preserving evidence stored digitally on a computer or other device.