WHO WE ARE - WHAT I DO

It occurred to me that since my girl Cindy got me into this blogging thing I’ve never taken any time to talk about what I do. A lot of people have a very romantic picture of private investigators so I figured I’d set the record straight a little bit.

First of all, books and TV would give you the idea that there are millions of us out there, in every city on every street. The fact is, there are only about 45,000 private detectives in the country. That might still sound like a lot, but you got to realize that only about a quarter of us are self-employed. About the same number work for some detective agency. Then you subtract out the 15 percent who are store detectives - the rest of us don’t count those guys anyhow. That leave about a third of the big number who are working for state or local government, law firms, employment services companies, insurance agencies, and banks and the like. None of them wants to help you with your problems.

So why only an average of less than 500 per state? Well, the hours suck. The work is dangerous. And people who are really qualified usually have better sense and stay in law enforcement, or insurance, or the military, or they get a job in government or doing intelligence work.

Most P.I.s come from those professions and the guys I respect are highly qualified. Not all of them have their B.S. degree in police science like I got, but some have lots more than my six years of police experience and the three years I spent in the Protective Service as a U.S. Marshal. But some have no qualifications at all so if you’re in the market, be careful.

Most states, like The District, require private detectives to get a license. The requirements are all different, though, and in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota there’s no license required at all.

Some people say, why do we need private investigators? Isn’t that what we pay the police for? Well, there’s stuff we do that the cops can’t, and most of it’s legal. The biggest thing for me, is the surveillance. Sure, I can check a guy’s employment or income with a phone call, but to know what he’s really up to, nothing replaces laying eyes on a guy for hours or days at a time. Cops can’t afford the resources for that kind of thing. They can’t informally interview friends, neighbors and coworkers. Lawyers and businesses hire me to do that kind of stuff as much as individuals do. And the cops can’t just work one case until it’s done, like they do on TV. I can, and generally do.

As you know, I also do personal protection work, stop harassment, get the goods on people at the wrong end of law suits and child custody cases, and handle missing person cases if someone being missing puts somebody else in jeopardy. Any kind of trouble people get into, I can try to get them out of, except maybe computer fraud or identity theft, in which case I’ll refer you to another expert I know. I’m also not interested in premarital screening or verifying infidelity, but for some of my fellow private investigators, that’s their bread and butter.

My kind tends to specialize. There’s guys, and gals I better say, who focus on intellectual property theft. There’s legal investigators, corporate investigators, financial investigators, store and hotel detectives. And then there’s me. I’m the only professional troubleshooter that I know of, and I’m kind of glad of that. As far as private eyes, now you’ve got an idea of who we really are. And for me, I hope you got an idea of what I do.