PI Runs for City Council

Public safety and traffic management are shaping up to be hot topics in the race for Houston City Council At-Large Position 2 between incumbent Sue Lovell and challenger Michael "Griff" Griffin, a private investigator.

"People are scared out there," Griffin said. "I want to change that."

It is Better to Play Safe Than Be Sorry

A common pen or even a hand phone lying on the table could mean more than meets the eye these days.

The technology used in these simple devices has become so sophisticated that they possess the capability of recording an entire board meeting without anyone even realizing.

With the dawn of such hi-tech devices, and the consequences that could follow if certain recordings are made public, some private companies are considering a ban on hand phones at meetings altogether.

Clothing Store Caught Faking It

The clothing sold at Get Fitted Phase III, 1232 Lathrop Ave. in Racine, is not apparently what it seemed.

Racine police, with the aid of a private investigator, raided the business in June after a two-month investigation revealed the store trafficked in counterfeit apparel and accessories.

If convicted on one count of trafficking in counterfeit marks (goods), owner Carey Collins, Racine, faces $10,000 in fines and up to six years in prison.

It's 10 P.M. Do You Know Where Your Child Is?

Giora Katzir, acting chairman of the Association of Private Investigators and chair of the association's disciplinary committee, says that although most cases handled by private investigators involve matrimonial, insurance- and business-related matters - in recent years, he's heard about dozens of parents turning to PIs, and asking them to investigate their children's activities. Investigators who work in the field say that most of these requests involve children who are 11 and older, from well-off, educated and secular families, and that in a majority of cases, it is boys and not girls whom the parents wish to have followed. In most cases, the investigation is launched after the parents begin to suspect that their child is involved in some kind of criminal or shady dealings; but there are also parents who just want to check into whether their high school-age daughter is seeing a married man, or what their son's sexual orientation is.

Program Pays for Private Eye to Locate Kids

As any Child Protective Services caseworker can tell you, the first step in helping endangered children is to find them.

Many low-income families with CPS files move nomadically from relatives' homes to apartments to rent houses. Locating them can require the skills of a private investigator.

And often that's whom caseworkers turn to for help.

Under a program funded by United Way of Tarrant County, a licensed private investigator has tracked down more than 300 families that seemed to have vanished from the Earth.

Dan Rather’s Conspiracy Theory

Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against his old employers, and it is based on a set of astonishing allegations that are sure to bring what became known as “Rathergate” back into the news.

In the suit, Rather alleges that he was forced to apologize for the Bush story as part of a conspiracy by top CBS management to ensure that no further damaging revelations about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard would become public. Rather also alleges that CBS hired a private investigator to re-report the original story — after Rather threatened to hire his own private eye to do the same thing — and that the investigator found the story to be accurate, only to have his findings suppressed by CBS as part of an effort to curry favor with the Bush White House. Finally, Rather alleges that CBS fired him over the story the day after Bush was reelected, despite his later claims that his departure was separate from the Bush story.

Eye Spy

Listen to Andrew Faller describe his life as a private eye and you'll realize it's not exactly Miami Vice. Yes, private eyes round up bail jumpers, repossess cars and provide security to VIPs, but a lot of the time they are watching or reading.

Watching the store clerk suspected of pocketing proceeds. Reading the criminal record of a job applicant. Watching the employee chop wood while "nursing" a worker's comp injury.

"It's not like on TV," said Faller, who lives in Meredith and became a private investigator about four years ago after retiring as the police chief in Center Harbor. "There is lots of downtime."

Death's Puzzle Unsolved

The last time Lucy Carman saw her daughter, the 21-year-old was sitting on the concrete steps in front of her Church Street home, talking to a bicyclist.

Next thing she knew, the daughter named after her was gone.

Two weeks later, on Sept. 15, 1987, family members found young Lucy Carman's body face down in a channel of the nearby Hockanum River. Police treated the case as a homicide, canvassing dozens of neighbors and doing more than 70 interviews. They gathered weather data, subpoenaed medical records and took aerial photographs, chronicling all the information in a case file more than 300 pages long.

Bruce Nease became interested in the case after he joined the detective bureau. In 2002, he did a flurry of interviews, some with people police had never spoken to but, again, nothing panned out. Nease has since retired, but is working on the case as a private investigator for Tritec Investigations Inc. of Portland.

Schools Enforcing Boundaries 'Illegal' Students Told to Leave

With the new school year under way, superintendent Michael Silsby hopes all 3,984 students of the Wallenpaupack Area School District are legally enrolled.

He and the district take some extra effort to be sure.

For the past two years, the district has employed a private investigator to verify complaints of illegally enrolled students. Such students do not attend school in the district they reside in.

Tories Urged to Fix Spy Scandal

Pressure is piling on Premier Ed Stelmach to overhaul the province's powerful energy regulator after a report found the agency breached privacy rules when it hired detectives to spy on power-line opponents in central Alberta.

A privacy commissioner probe released Thursday found investigators working for the Energy and Utilities Board improperly collected the personal information of Rimbey-area protesters. The findings ignited calls for radical changes at the energy watchdog.

The Liberals demanded a public inquiry into government use of private investigators, and called for Energy Minister Mel Knight to be fired -- after pointing to a new case where the EUB hired a P.I. for a hearing in Redwater on an oil upgrader last spring.

Ex-restaurant Owner Becomes Pistol-toting Private Investigator

Terri Russell is a pistol-packing private eye and a grandmother of six.

She’s the owner of Russell Investigations, an all-woman, licensed private investigation firm based out of her home in a wooded, rural area near Lake City.

Taking on the Gigolos and Cons

Like many people who live and work in Marin County, Anaquad Cobe feels himself relax every time he drives across the Golden Gate Bridge, taking in the green hills, the ragged shores and the sense that he's left the city and its worries behind him.

But Cobe knows that sense of security is an illusion. As a private investigator for more than 30 years, Cobe spends his days and nights hunting the hustlers, gigolos and con artists who see Marin County as a gold mine.

6 Exciting Job Ideas for the Adventurous

You don't have to be an extreme skier or a motocross rider to get paid for pumping adrenaline. In fact, six of the fastest growing careers in America require candidates who love to put themselves in extreme conditions to get their jobs done. Each one of these careers has been rated by government analysts as growing as fast as or faster than the average career over the next decade. While spies handle justice on a global scale and detectives close cases locally, private investigators dig for information that can help settle civil lawsuits. Instead of uncovering clues for mysterious clients, most private investigators scour parking lots and pawn shops for stolen property. Other specialists uncover insurance fraud, locate child support deadbeats, and plug corporate information leaks.

Filmmaker Seeks to Withdraw Guilty Plea

Almost 17 months after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about hiring indicted Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano, film director John McTiernan on Monday sought to withdraw his plea on grounds that the government's case relied on inadmissible evidence.

The surprise move surfaced during the scheduled sentencing of the 56-year-old director, whose film credits include "Die Hard" and "Predator."

His effort dovetails with attempts by Pellicano and his co-defendants to derail the government's wiretapping and conspiracy case by attacking the tactics and credibility of its five-year investigation.

Search For Missing Foster Child to Gain New Momentum

The search for a missing three-year-old Las Vegas child may soon gain new momentum. The court-appointed Guardian ad Litem for Everlyse Cabrera plans to hire a private investigator to find the girl.

Everlyse Cabrera went missing from her foster home more than a year ago.

Foster parents Vilma and Manny Carrascal claim the child must have walked out the front door in the middle of the night. Everlyse was two years old at the time of her disappearance.

Kathryn Chandler: 1916-2007

Kathryn Chandler, who learned to shoot when she was just 6 years old, was among the first women in Chicago to get a private investigator license, which she used while working for her dad in the 1930s as they shadowed mob figures and cheating husbands.

Private Eye Takes the Stand in Ex-FBI Agent’s Murder Inquiry

The private investigator whose work triggered the indictment of a retired FBI agent took the stand yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court as defense attorneys again tried to impugn the information that formed the basis of the former G-man’s murder charges.

New video from private investigators gives new look at Athens fire

Many questions surround a fire that completely demolished the old Butler Furniture building in Athens Monday afternoon.

Private investigator Dwight Posey, II. says, "Well when we got there weren't really any crews that had arrived yet so once we got there, we just kind of established a good point of view and got to the back part there where the fire was actually going real good and just set up."

Time To Let You in on a Little Secret...

The powers that be in New York and Los Angeles have finally given me the “okay” to let you all in on our secret: The Girls of Busted Confidential Investigations have a pilot episode of BUSTED! almost ready to hit network television ~ maybe even next week! We are going to be on NBC as a reality show and if y’all like it, we might just be a series! I know most of you have watched “reality” TV before, but let’s just have a little chat about what it’s like to shoot a pilot on a major network! First, the only thing that isn’t REAL (aside from hair color, a few capped teeth and some “after factory mark-up” body parts)* is that they shoot us walking in and out of the door at Busted more than once.

ABC 7 News - Virginia Tech Families May Seek Private Investigator

ABC 7 News - Virginia Tech Families May Seek Private Investigator: "The relatives of some of the Virginia Tech shooting victims may hire a private investigator to monitor a panel set up to review the incident.

An attorney representing the families of more than a dozen victims has asked the state to put an investigator on the panel who would be accountable to his clients.

Thomas Fadoul says some relatives of the victims are concerned that the panel, appointed by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, could get bogged down on extraneous issues. The families want to know about decisions made in response to the initial shootings and why the campus was not closed when they occurred. "

Investigator says CIA ran secret jails in Europe

LJWorld.com / Investigator says CIA ran secret jails in Europe: "The CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate key terror suspects, shackling and handcuffing inmates, keeping some naked for weeks and reducing contact with the outer world to masked and silent guards, a European investigator said Friday.

The CIA called the report “distorted,” but stopped short of denying the existence of prisons in the two countries — the agency said it does not discuss the location of its overseas facilities. Poland and Romania also vehemently denied the allegations.

“High value detainees” like self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and suspected senior al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah were held in Poland, said the report, which cited CIA sources. It said lesser detainees, but still of “remarkable importance,” were taken to Romania."

Investigator who died after drug raid named Westchester's officer of year

Investigator who died after drug raid named Westchester's officer of year: "Stuart Cohen, the Westchester County District Attorney's Office senior investigator who died from an illness that officials say he contracted during a drug raid, has been posthumously named the county's officer of the year.

Cohen's parents accepted a plaque from the county police chiefs association during a ceremony Wednesday at Luciano's Italian Restaurant in Yonkers.

District Attorney Janet DiFiore, who was chief of narcotics when Cohen was hired by her office in the 1990s, joined the fallen officer's widow and dozens of law enforcement officers for the event.

'Stu Cohen was a very brave and honorable police officer,' DiFiore said yesterday. 'He was one of the best police officers I ever worked with. He was tenacious and never gave up. He was very honest and ethical. He also had a big, bouncy, very pleasant and pleasing personality.'"

Operation Crown Strike arrests made

Untitled Document: "Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes Thursday announced the arrest of 11 people charged with running illegal drug operations in Crown Heights. The investigation began in the summer of 2006, when community leaders, at a routine meeting with Hynes, expressed outrage over the armed, organized drug dealers terrorizing their neighborhood.

A joint investigation by the Brooklyn DA’s Office and the NYPD uncovered several independently operating drug gangs dealing narcotics at multiple locations throughout the section of Crown Heights surrounding the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

Extensive video surveillance showed one dealer weighing out cocaine on a scale and another drug dealer using binoculars to monitor the block for police activity.

In addition to counter surveillance, the highly organized drug dealers used techniques such as changing clothes frequently to disguise their appearances and purposely neglecting to repair rotting and broken floor boards in drug stash houses, hoping to injure police in the event of a raid. While executing a search warrant, a KCDA detective investigator fell six feet through a damaged floor and broke her arm."

Independent investigator to review Berthoud crash

9NEWS - Article - Independent investigator to review Berthoud crash: "9NEWS has learned the Larimer County District Attorney will hire an outside investigator to review new allegations about a crash that cost two high school wrestlers their legs.

The new allegations are the result of a 9Wants to Know investigation into the details of the accident.

The Larimer County DA's office asked for a continuance in the case during a court hearing on Thursday afternoon.

The driver who hit the boys on January 15, 18-year-old Michelle Berra, is charged with two counts of careless driving. "

Texas investigator questions Miss. prisoner about murders

Hattiesburg American - www.hattiesburgamerican.com - Hattiesburg, Miss.: "Investigators searching for answers in the possible serial killings of seven women believed abducted from truck stops in several Southern states have again questioned a man imprisoned in Mississippi on an unrelated murder charge.
A Texas investigator visited Mississippi last month to interview state inmate John Robert Williams, officials said. Investigators from a multistate task force also came to Mississippi to question Williams and his girlfriend, Rachel Cumberland, two years ago.
Six of the victims were known truck-stop prostitutes whose nude or partially clothed bodies were found in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi between 2003 and 2004.
Williams, 30, is serving a life sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman on an unrelated murder charge.
Williams pleaded guilty in 2004 to the kidnapping and shooting death of Nikki Hill, a Neshoba County woman that he and Cumberland met at a casino. Cumberland, 37, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case and is serving a 20-year sentence.
Lt. Col. David Shaw, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, said no other cases have been officially connected to the two, according to a www.clarionledger.com article."