LEXINGTON, Ky. _ Private investigation is a catch-all term for a variety of independent research. The job can involve conducting surveillance, finding missing persons or checking to see whether a job applicant has a criminal record. Here is some trivia about whom private eyes work for, who they are and what they do.
_Of all the cases detectives get, only a few are domestic, involving divorce or a suspicious spouse.
_The demand for domestic surveillance in Kentucky is reduced by the state's no-fault clause, which requires that a divorced couple split their property in half.
How To Do Financial Asset Investigations: A Practical Guide for Private Investigators, Collections Personnel, and Assets Recovery Specialists by Ronald L. Mendell, 2nd Edition, Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, LTD., Springfield, Illinois, 2000.
A CITY council is planning to pay private detectives to go undercover and act as professional witnesses against suspected pimps and prostitutes.
The controversial proposal by Birmingham City Council is a response to growing anger from residents over the number of prostitutes working in the West Midlands and the lack of prosecutions against pimps.
But an association representing the city's police officers has described the idea as a "complete non-starter", and said policing should be left to the professionals.
Flashy sports cars and daring feats are the lot of private detectives and investigators--at least on television and in the movies. In the real world, people in this occupation might spend a typical day sitting in a car, watching for someone to appear; strolling around a store, seeking to catch shoplifters; or sitting in front of a computer, accessing information from electronic databases. Most private plainclothes detectives protect stores, hotels, and other establishments from theft, vandalism, and disorder.
Two counterfeit grading reports were discovered in Antwerp, Belgium, the Gemological Institute of America said. The two reports were purportedly for D Flawless stones. The buyer became suspicious and had one of the diamonds tested. "It turned out to be a high-pressure, high-temperature annealed," said Tom Moses, senior vice president of the GIA Laboratory and Research.
While the general perception of the fast-growing field of private investigation is that it's nonstop excitement, local private investigators say that much of the work is tedious.
It requires a lot of patience and common sense. "It's got to be in your blood. You don't think it's neat when you're sitting there for 12 to 15 hours watching day turn to night."
But many PIs -- a field expected to grow 18 to 26 percent through 2014 -- don't conduct surveillance anymore because many investigative cases aren't the lurk-in-the-shadows variety the public typically thinks of.
