Where does a real csi work?

Answer 1

Although glamorously portrayed on TV, the majority of evidence gathering work at crime scenes is done by officers or civilian technicians trained in gathering and preserving evidence who then turn it over to a centralized lab to be worked on and analyzed by even better trained lab technicians. This is not true in ALL departments of course but IS generally the case. Only the largest cities and police departments can afford to support sophisticated operations as shown by the media. In many/most cases, local department must rely on the labs operated by their State Police Departments or even the F.B.I. Lab.