Despite what you might have seen on TV, private investigations are not all about hiding in the bushes and getting into gunfights. The job of a private investigator is actually pretty mundane most of the time. I am perhaps the busiest, most successful private investigator Atlanta has to offer, and I still spend a lot of time doing background checks at home. Private investigation does involve a lot of surveillance work, and even occasionally requires you to stake people out and follow them around. For the most part, however, private investigations are pretty tame.
When I first got my private investigators license, I had very unrealistic expectations for the job. As most people who study kung fu grew up watching martial arts movies, so most people involved in private investigations grew up watching film Noir. I expected to be drinking at all hours of the day, talking to beautiful women, fighting it out with tough thugs, and even getting into an occasional gunfight. Perhaps I am overstating the case a little bit. I knew that private investigations weren't all that dangerous, and most of the stuff that private investigators do in the film noir movies would get you arrested. Nonetheless,I did think private investigations would involve more high drama than they do.
I will give you an example of what a typical private investigation is like. In my last case, I was working for a boss, trying to find out if one of his employees was cheating on his disability benefits. Rather than spending all of the private investigations hunkered down in the bushes, however, I divided my time between doing background research on him and taking photos of his activities.
Private investigators have different styles. I could have gotten more photographic evidence showing that he was doing vigorous physical activity while pretending to have a serious injury. Instead, I used some private investigation tricks to make things easier. I found several records of him running in marathons and participating in sports clubs in the past several months. This meant that I didn't have to follow him around and risk a potential confrontation. Intelligent private investigations involve very little action. Basically, if you don't have to follow someone around, you don't. Otherwise, you could get hurt. Criminal background checks are every bit as important to private investigations as are photos. Personally, I prefer the former over the latter. After all, it is much less work to do the background check.
3/21/2015
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