Louisiana Photo Enforcement Program Hits Legal Snag

Although Louisiana state lawmakers have consistently rejected legislation authorizing the use of red light and speed cameras, a handful of local governments, including the city-parish of Lafayette, decided to move forward on automated ticketing programs without clear legal authority. Within days of Lafayette's new cameras hitting the streets, however, a unique legal challenge surfaced.

Local activist Denice C. Skinner filed an official complaint with Lafayette police late Monday claiming that Redflex, the Australian company that operates the ticketing program, is violating a state law requiring a license for any non-governmental entity in the business of gathering evidence for use in court proceedings.

So You Want to be a Private Eye

Anyone who's grown up in the United States in the past 50 years can tell you what it's like to be a private investigator: You've either got a fast car or an old beater, a big gun, a dismal romantic record and a trademark phrase or item of clothing. You're usually an ex-cop or military officer, your cases are dangerous and someone generally attempts to hurt, if not kill, you.

Yeah, right.

"I did love "Magnum, P.I.," I cannot lie," said Patrick Troy of Bethel, who opened Bluevision Investigations in July. However, he was also the person his friends turned to if they needed to find something out. "I always was interested in private investigating."

Private Investigators, Once All Males, Now Changing in US

Recent surveys show 15 percent of all private investigators in the U.S. are women. VOA's Ernest Leong has more on the increasing number of women in this male-dominated occupation.

A mysterious woman, the "femme fatale," tells the detective a story that may or may not be true. Men in trench coats and fedoras [brimmed hats] follow each other on dark, crowded streets. A typical Hollywood private eye movie, but Hollywood's depiction of men and women in the detective films is very different from real life.

Powell Family Seeks Outside Help

The family of Kevin Powell has hired a private investigator to help uncover the reason why Santa Ana police officers shot and killed the Aliso Viejo resident on Oct. 2 following a 20-minute vehicle pursuit, according to family attorney Marion Wheeler.

Wheeler said that the family's uncertainty over Powell's death and the lack of information disclosed by officials led to their seeking outside assistance.

Speed of Crash Vehicle Disputed

A police crash investigator told this week's inquest that the car was travelling at an estimated 95kmh to 121kmh - but private investigator and specialist crash analyst Paul Bass disagrees.

He told the inquest yesterday that skid testing was not done and some factors were not taken into account. Mr Bass' analysis gave a speed range for the car of between 123kmh and 139kmh.

Father Hires Private Investigator to Help Find Son Missing in Chicago

Don Ross, father of the University of Missouri-Kansas City student who went missing in Chicago last November, has hired a private investigator to continue the search for his son.

He said that while his son, Jesse Ross, remains among the list of active missing person cases in Chicago, police there have suspended the search. “But they would still respond to any new leads they get” concerning the 20-year-old’s whereabouts, the father said.

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.