Chapter

3

Tools of the PI Trade

In This Chapter

Private investigators sell a product just as surely as ice cream parlors sell ice cream to eager customers. As a PI, your “scoop” is information, not ice cream. In both lines of business, though, the scoop has to be pleasing to the eyes and satisfying to the tastes of your customers. Sometimes you want to package your information as a photograph or video clip; in some cases, you issue a formal written report; and other times you meet with your clients in person or on the phone to fill them in on what you found.

But no matter what kind of information you provide or how you deliver it, you need tools—tools to collect the information, to analyze it, and to deliver it to your clients. Some of the items in a private investigator’s toolbox are digital, others are analog, and still others are good old-fashioned mechanical. Other PI tools are intangible, such as skills or techniques you gain as you get experience in the business. This chapter pokes around the PI’s toolbox to give you insights into the many gadgets, devices, and tricks of the trade.

Getting Behind the Wheel

In the television show Magnum, P.I., Tom Selleck plays the role of private investigator Thomas Magnum. Magnum drives a red Ferrari convertible—even while keeping subjects under surveillance. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I saw a red Ferrari in my rearview mirror, I think I would recognize it when I saw it again a few minutes later, or even a few hours later. That’s television for you. I know a lot of real-life PIs, and not one of them zips around in a Ferrari—or any other fancy sports car—when they’re on the job.

Ideally, you don’t want your subjects to see you at all. You want to stay far enough away from them that they can’t get a good visual on you or your car. But if they do happen to see you, you definitely don’t want them to notice you or your vehicle. To achieve these goals, choose a relatively high-horsepower vehicle that blends in with all the other automobiles on the road. More horsepower is better in surveillance vehicles so that you can linger a few blocks behind your subject but catch up quickly if you need to.

Your best bet is a four-door, eight-cylinder, gray or earth-tone auto. Such a vehicle blends into most parking lots and gives you room to take your clients to lunch. Pickup trucks and SUVs also make good surveillance vehicles, particularly in suburban and rural areas.

Avoid any vehicle that looks like a police car. Likewise, black vans with dark-tinted windows or no windows at all, sometimes called “kidnapper vans,” make people suspicious. Also pass on driving a black SUV with tinted windows—they too closely resemble the vehicles driven by FBI agents on TV shows. And my final recommendation should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: stay away from the flashy sport cars.

Shooting Your Subjects…with a Camera

A camera is a PI’s best friend. Taking pictures is an important part of all aspects of the PI business, including domestic cases, criminal defense, insurance defense, nursing home abuse, homicide and suspicious suicide cases, and employee theft.

These situations, among others, call for a camera:

• Providing a visual of the subject: A lawyer might want to know what a potential witness looks like before deciding to put him on the stand; a wife might want to know the appearance of the person with whom her husband is having an affair.

• Documenting injuries: Bruises, cuts, and other signs of physical injury fade; take pictures of them for later use in trials or other legal proceedings.

• Documenting crime scenes and locations important to an investigation: These may include areas where a slip and fall occurred, the intersection of a traffic accident, or the place where a drug arrest went down.

• Providing evidence of an affair or other suspected behavior: Such photos can include a cheating spouse in a compromising embrace or two cars parked together in front of a motel or apartment.

About the only types of PI work for which you might not need a camera are cases that don’t require you to leave your desk: skip tracing, diligent adoption and estate searches, and pre-employment background checks.

Except for the workers’ compensation–type cases, which require video cameras (more on these in a bit), a quality digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera is the most important tool in most private investigators’ toolboxes. Admittedly, this type of camera is being challenged by the versatility and light-gathering ability of video cameras, but because you can change lenses with an SLR, it remains the standard bearer for most PIs. Buy the best 35mm digital camera you can afford. If you’ve got the bucks, get a Canon EOS 5D Mark III (Nikon makes a similar model) and use it for both still and video.

You can take as many pictures as your memory and battery life allow. And when you’re writing your reports using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, you can insert digital photos directly into the report and burn them to a CD to mail along with your report. Be sure to burn two CDs, one for the client and one for your file. Nothing sells your skills as well as a report with your photos inserted into it.

When shopping for an SLR camera, pay attention to these features:

• Number of megapixels

• Storage media

• Zoom capabilities

Because these features are so important, I devote a section to each of them.

Megapixels

A high-end digital camera has more than 20 million pixels, or 20 megapixels. Older and less expensive digitals have fewer pixels. Like everything else in the computer world, electronics get better and less expensive pretty quickly. Ten-million-pixel and higher cameras are pretty much standard issue now.

Storage Media

To access your digital photos, you have to transfer them from your camera to a computer. So before buying a digital camera, make sure that its magnetic storage media is compatible with your computer. Many older laptops have a PCMCIA card slot, which can accept memory cards. PCMCIA slots and cards have pretty much gone the way of the wooly mammoths. In today’s world you want an all-in-one card reader, which plugs into your computer via a USB bus. These readers have slots that accept compact flash cards, memory sticks, SDs, and mini SDs. Pay the few bucks extra and buy one with a USB 3.0 transfer rate instead of the USB 2.0. Your current computer may not be up to USB 3.0 but your next one will.

All digital cameras allow you to download pictures directly from the camera to a computer via cables. The drawback to this method is speed: downloading pictures takes longer than inputting them directly from storage media.

HIDDEN HINT

One more aspect to consider with magnetic media is that some media can record images faster than others. When you’re shopping for still cameras, buy the media storage that allows for faster storage. You can take quicker shots and won’t miss the critical photo while waiting for the camera to save the previous shot.

Zoom Capabilities

The more zoom power your camera has, the better it will serve you. When you’ve got a subject under surveillance (see Chapters 10 and 11), you want to be able to remain as far away as possible while still getting good shots. The catch-22, of course, is that the greater the distance to your subjects, the more difficult it is to get good pictures. A high-power zoom lens can help tip the balance in your favor.

Most PIs use a 100 to 300mm zoom lens. You can add a doubler between the lens and the camera body to get an effective focal length of 600mm. If you want a lens any more powerful than 600mm, you’ll need to zoom in on a business loan to pay for it. The more megapixels your camera has the farther away you can be, because you can use photo editing software to blow up the area of interest and not have a fuzzy-looking photo.

How far away can you be? Well, you want to be able to see your subject in the viewfinder from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Zoom into that point and you’re good to go. If you’ve zoomed in all the way and have a lot of sky over his head, you might want to consider moving in a bit closer. Obviously, clear facial recognition is important.

Up to this point, I’ve been talking about optical zooms. Optical zoom is how long of zoom the lens has. Depending upon the camera, a 40 mm lens gives you a view of about what the naked eye sees. A 100 mm zoom lens will bring your view more than twice as close. Both digital still and video cameras may have a digital zoom feature. The digital zoom works very well, up to a point. Digital zoom works by magnifying the size of the image on the receptor chip in the camera. But since it’s a digital magnification and not an optical one, it reaches a point where the picture becomes fuzzy or grainy. When deciding on a camera, all other things being equal, go first for the camera with the highest optical zoom, and then consider the power of the digital zoom.

For your photographs to be effective in court, the subject must be identifiable. This means you have to get good, clear, well-focused shots. At 600mm, you’ll need a tripod to steady the camera to avoid blurring the picture. A fast shutter speed also helps prevent blurred pictures, but with a super-long lens on the camera, the amount of light that enters the lens is reduced, so you may need to use slower shutter speeds. With a good image-stabilized lens (these pricey devices digitally correct for motion blur, giving you a sharper image) you can probably get your shot.

Taking Pictures or Video in Low or No Light

When you need to take pictures at night or in dark venues but don’t want to use flashbulbs or spotlights, you have two options:

• ISO speed of 3200 or 6400: A good camera set to a processing speed of 3200 or 6400 should get you a useable photo in low light. You might have to manually set the shutter speed to 1/30 or 1/15.

• Infrared: Sony offers infrared night shot capability on many of its video cameras. It works pretty well at close range, and you can buy an optional infrared light that should work up to a hundred feet. The night shot feature on many Canon cameras isn’t infrared, but it increases the gain on the receptors in the camera. It works well, but if the subject is moving, the image will blur and be streaked.

THE SCOOP

When purchasing a video camera, find one that has a viewfinder that you look through with one eye and not one that has a small screen viewfinder that flips out to the side of the camera. Why? Because if you’re sitting in your vehicle at night, when you turn on the video camera the screen lights up the whole interior of your car, and anyone a block away can see you.

For digital video cameras, I suggest going right to the manufacturers’ websites to read and compare the specifications on the cameras. Then go to your local electronics store for a hands-on feel of the camera and personalized answers to your questions. Now, where can you find the best price for the camera equipment you want to purchase? Sounds like a question for an aspiring PI to solve. Shop around, though, because most of the brand names have a street price considerably lower than the suggested retail price.

Lights, Camera, Action: Putting Your Camera to Work

It was 11:30 at night on Friday, May 10. The lights in the apartment I’d been watching had gone out about a half hour before. My client’s husband, Jonathan, from whom she was separated, had taken their 3-year-old son with him for the weekend. Part of the separation agreement was that Jonathan wouldn’t cohabitate or spend the night with other women while he had custody of the child.

I’d followed Jonathan to his girlfriend’s apartment complex and watched him and the little boy enter. His SUV was parked in front of the apartment, and the girlfriend’s car was parked next to his. I walked up to the vehicles and, using a large, black, permanent felt-tip marker, I drew an inverted V on the sidewall at the very top of the right rear tire on both cars. If the vehicles departed and then later returned, I would know it by checking the position of the V. It would be nearly impossible for the V to be in the exact same position relative to the fender as when I drew it.

Next, I backed off a ways behind the cars and took out my trusty Canon digital SLR that allows me to set the aperture for low-light situations. I took three shots of the two cars and the front of the apartment. My objective was to record both vehicles and the address in the same photo. Then I scooted out of there. Back at the office, I added the date and time onto the face of the photographs. I printed two high-quality prints of the photographs, one for my client and one for her attorney.

At 7 the next morning, I was back at the same apartment complex. Both cars were still there. The inverted V was in the same position I’d left it. Dew was on both car roofs and front windshields. I felt the grille area on both cars, and both were cold. My conclusion? Neither car had moved since 11:30 the previous night, indicating that Jonathan had spent the night with his girlfriend, son in tow.

I shot two more photographs of both cars and hustled back to my office. This time, I added “May 11th 7 A.M.” to the prints. After three or four weekends of this, we had what the client wanted. The case went to court, and Jonathan’s attorney agreed to the facts in my report without me having to testify. The client told me that, of all the money she’d spent going through the divorce, the most productive use of her money was what she’d spent with my firm.

Choosing the Right Computer

You can’t run a successful PI business today without a good computer and a fast internet connection. If you’re not computer literate, don’t hang out your shield until you are. Even if you want to handle the financial and administrative aspects of your business on paper, you need a computer to access the databases for researching your cases. Check out Chapters 4, 5, and 6 for a rundown of the various types of information available to PIs through the internet.

Your computer should have the fastest processor, the largest hard drive, and the most memory (RAM) you can afford. Why does it have to be so powerful? Thirty days after you’ve bought your new state-of-the-art computer, it’ll be outdated, and a newer, faster, larger computer will be on the market. By starting with the best product du jour, you’ll get about four good years out of it before you need to start thinking about replacing it.

If you’re going to skimp at all, skip the hottest processor and get the day-old version. You can sometimes save a considerable amount of money by buying the second-fastest processor on the market. The sometimes slight differences in performance aren’t that big. Never skimp on the hard drive or the memory.

Computer programs get larger and require more RAM every time companies issue a new version. If you’re having stability problems, programs are crashing, or the computer is locking up, try adding more RAM to your computer. Increasing RAM can solve a whole host of problems.

Stocking Up on Peripheral Equipment

You can buy plenty of bells and whistles for your computer—just don’t tell your spouse that The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating, Third Edition suggested the high-quality soundcard with the subwoofers. Not true. But you do want these add-ons:

• CD/DVD burner: You can duplicate your photographs or video right onto a DVD and make copies for your file, your client, and your client’s client.

• External hard drive: Use it for backup and additional nonessential storage, like copies of subpoenas and affidavits that you’ll probably never need again after the return of service has been made.

• Color printer: A high-quality color printer, using premium photo paper specifically designed for color printers, will give you prints nearly indistinguishable from those made at a photography shop.

Harnessing the Latest Tablet Computer Technology

If you already own a laptop computer, you may have a hard time justifying the expense of the latest iPad or other brand of computer tablet. Maybe this story will help you see how valuable one can be as an investigative tool:

A few months ago, I was making the late night/early morning runs on yet another child custody case. This time, the ex-husband hired me to find out if his wife was cohabiting with a man when she had their son with her. My client, Robert, called me on Saturday and said his ex-wife and the boyfriend were going to be at the apartment complex pool with his son. He wanted documentation of the boyfriend hanging around his 4-year-old.

I could have sat in a car and tried from a distance to get photos or video of them playing in the pool, but that would have been very difficult. Instead, I took my drink, my pool towel, and my iPad. I pulled up a chaise lounge in the pool area and sat there “reading” on my iPad. Well, not really. Instead, I was taking photos with the iPad of the ex, the new boyfriend, and my client’s son frolicking in the pool. Nobody paid any attention to the guy who was engrossed in his ebook. I got the best pictures ever and could not have done that with any other type of camera. My iPad is a regular part of my surveillance toolkit.

Looking into a Good Pair of Binoculars

A good pair of binoculars will make you a more productive investigator. Binoculars come in a variety of sizes and types, but you can’t go wrong with a pair rated 7×50 (the first number indicates the optical magnification; the second number is the aperture of the light-collecting lenses in millimeters). At that power and that size, the image doesn’t “bounce” around too much.

Get the most expensive pair of binoculars you can afford. The difference between an inexpensive pair and an expensive pair might not be noticeable when you’re inspecting them in the store, but the light-gathering aspects of binoculars vary significantly, usually in proportion to the price tag. On a nighttime surveillance, quality binoculars will gather more light and make it easier to see your subject’s activities. A good set of binoculars is filled with nitrogen or some other inert gas injected into the binoculars between the lens and the eyepieces. This prevents moisture and dirt from getting into the binoculars.

Some binoculars have a compass built into the viewfinder. Knowing where north, south, east, and west lay is very handy. If you’re in radio contact with another investigator and your subject is on the move, you can tell the other investigator exactly which direction the subject is moving or toward which direction the activity is shifting. It’s a lot clearer to say, “The subject is moving east around the end of the shopping center” than to say, “The subject is moving toward my right, around the end of the shopping center.” The other investigator probably doesn’t know which way you’re facing and will be unsure of which direction he should be looking.

Converting Video to DVD

In surveillance operations, probably 95 percent of private investigators use video. This is because, by far, the largest customer market in the PI business is the insurance company checking on claimants to be sure that they’re injured and their claimed disabilities are genuine. When shooting video that might need to be used in a courtroom as evidence, you need to keep one point in mind: having the time and date on the video screen is very important when showing a video in court. Unfortunately, many video recorders record the time and date on a different track than the video itself, and when you transfer the video from the recorder to your computer to burn onto a DVD, you often lose the date and time track or your computer doesn’t recognize it. If you burn a copy of the video without the date and time stamp, you’re essentially rendering the video useless as evidence.

According to Mitch Davis of TSCM/Special Operations Group of Nashville, Tennessee (www.tscmusa.com), the key is to avoid changing file formats. Instead, burn your digital video directly to disc using a standalone DVD burner. These devices are inexpensive and simple to operate.

There is a rule of evidence called “next best evidence.” Among other things, it means if the original piece isn’t available, but a photocopy is available, then the photocopy can be entered into evidence. This applies to making copies of your video for use in a courtroom. If your video is on the hard drive of your camera, then a DVD with a copy of it will suffice.

The problem comes in making the copy. As many PIs know, when copying a video from the camera to a computer hard drive, the date and time stamp on the original on the camera is lost in the downloading to your computer. So to avoid this problem many PIs use a program like Dazzle, which enables you to add the date and time. However, this means that you have altered the original file format because you have to tell Dazzle what time to start with.

The better option is to copy the video directly from the camera to a standalone DVD burner. This transfer to a DVD burner will create an analog copy of the High Def (HD) original, but will also capture the original time and date stamp. If you do it any other way, an astute attorney can ask you if you’ve altered the video in any fashion, and you’ll have to say “yes” because you reinserted the time and date. “What else have altered?” the attorney will ask. “Did you take out where my client was limping so badly he could hardly walk?” And on and on.

Use the simple, straightforward approach. Use cables and the analog output of your camera to burn your copies directly to a DVD burner. No muss, no fuss, and you can honestly say you have not altered the video in any way.

Sometimes we get caught up with “high tech” stuff and think we have to show an HD video because it was originally shot in HD. Not so. Neither the judge, the jury, nor the attorneys will even notice, and most likely the TV or monitor used in the courtroom isn’t HD anyway.

While producing or obtaining video for clients, remember your goal is to use that video to show an irrefutable act or incriminating activity performed by the subject. The video will look the same whether in HD or not. If the images you obtain demonstrate their intended purpose with minimal question, you’ve done a good job, and you’ll have a satisfied client.

Recording the Facts

A private investigator’s clients see only the written or photographic results of our work. They don’t see the gallons of sweat on the floor of your car after a hot afternoon surveillance. They don’t feel the fear of a near collision on the freeway when your subject exits suddenly and you have to jump three lanes of traffic to stay behind him. To them, your product is your report. That’s all they’ll see—that and any evidence you collect.

Because your written report represents all the work you put into an investigation, you need to make it look professional. I talk in greater length in Chapter 20 about formatting your reports. Here, I discuss the process of getting the facts down so that you don’t lose them or forget them. The quality of your report reflects directly on you as an investigator. And when clients are impressed with the product, they become repeat customers.

Some surveillance investigators handwrite their surveillance logs. That works, but it is tedious. A better way is to dictate the surveillance into a digital recorder as you go along. With that method, you can capture all the details—license plate numbers, right and left turns, and the rest—as they happen. Down the road, those little details that you record may become important. People really are creatures of habit, and as you work a subject, his patterns will develop. If this is all laid out in your surveillance logs, the next guy working him will have the benefit of your experience.

Keep a pen and paper ready for quick notes. Always jot down any important license plate number as you see it; sometimes we transpose numbers when dictating. Plus, you may need to call in the tag to your office and have the registration run. You don’t want to have to listen back through your entire surveillance log to find a tag.

As long as we’re on the topic of surveillance logs, here’s one piece of advice you won’t find in any other book. Back at the office, watch the surveillance video you’ve just made on a monitor. Dictate while the tape is running. In your dictation, note the times of significant activity. When the claimant picks up that 50-pound bag of fertilizer, note that in your log. You don’t have to mention every bend and each motion of his body, but do enter into the log the time of any activity you think is important.

When you show these tapes in court, the judge won’t want to watch the entire thing. After a few moments, he’ll ask you to fast-forward the tape to the “good parts.” With the time and date on the tape, and the same time and date in your typed log, you can go right to the good parts and skip over the long, boring, and unimportant parts.

If you’re just beginning a business, you might not have a secretary. I suggest not hiring one until you find that the volume of report typing you’re doing is actually keeping you from working on cases. At that point, hire a part-time secretary, and you’ll become more profitable.

HIDDEN HINT

The importance of producing a high-quality product cannot be stressed enough. The candy maker’s fudge must first look good enough to eat. To keep clients coming back, the fudge has to taste even better than it looks. Likewise, your product should look professional, and as the client reads through the report and views the photographs, the contents should be even more pleasing to him.

In one of the examples in this chapter, I talked about a subject named Jonathan, whom I had under surveillance for spending the night with his girlfriend while having his 3-year-old for the weekend. Who do you think his wife, or her attorney, is going to recommend the next time somebody asks for the name of a good private investigator? In fact, his attorney, recognizing my good work, now regularly refers clients to me. Even better than that, last year Jonathan, recognizing good work when he saw it, called me to work on a case for him and his now new soon-to-be ex-wife. Success, in this case, is sweet and just keeps building on itself.

The Least You Need to Know

• Buy a car that is practical for both conducting surveillance and carting clients to lunch.

• Three important tools of the trade are a digital SLR camera, a digital video camera, and a good pair of binoculars.

• You can’t run a PI business without a computer. Buy a computer with a recent processor, a very large hard drive, and as much RAM as you can afford.

• Use a good-quality digital recorder to dictate during a surveillance instead of handwriting a surveillance log.

• Convert your video to DVD by using a DVD burner instead of your computer.

• A high-quality finished product will please your clients and fatten your bottom line.