Informants: Working Hard or Hardly Working

When I first started out as a young police detective, I would spend hundreds of hours, often times for naught, trying to solve a heinous or complex crime.  After a while, I discovered that if I spent about fifteen minutes with the right person, in the right place, and maybe throw in a cigarette and a candy bar, I could often crack the case.  In investigating terms, the right person was an informant.  This goes for both police detectives and private investigators.  Often times there is someone out there who has knowledge of the case, but you have to use the right approach and do it in the right location, in order to get the right results. 

Try not to let police movies or TV cloud your vision of how to work an informant.  You don’t approach someone on the street and expect them to talk to you.  By doing this, it also shows your lack of knowledge of the street and you won’t be trusted.  For police detectives, an individual can be interviewed back at the police station or in the lock up. 

I used to scan the daily arrest logs to see if anyone got arrested near one of the crimes I was investigating, or if any of my informants had managed to get themselves locked up.  I’d talk to the detective that was handling the individual’s current arrest to clear it with him, and then I’d go and talk to him.  It’s amazing how many arrestees, knowing that their looking at going back to prison, will talk to you if you have the right approach.  You have to be able to convince them that you will protect them and not reveal their identity.  Start small, and once they give something up that appears to be good, that’s when they get rewarded with the coffee or soda.  The more they give up, and the bigger the case, is when the candy bars and cigarettes come out.  Remember, they get the goodies after they cooperate, not before.

The same holds for private investigators.  You can meet with a possible cooperative informant off-site from his workplace or home.  Whether you’re a cop or a PI, you always pick the time and location.  You want to make sure you’re not being setup.

Different motivations motivate different people to give up information.  It can be fear, revenge, retaliation, power, honesty etc.  You need to find which one is the one that turns your informant.  Find the right one, and your case can be solved.

THE ETAN PATZ CASE

A 33 year old missing person’s case in New York City is again drawing international headlines. On May 25, 1979, six year old Etan Patz disappeared on his way to school.  His photograph was the first missing child to appear on milk cartons.  Although the case has been widely publicized throughout the years, no arrests were ever made.  Recently, however, news reports have stated that NYPD detectives had interviewed an individual in New Jersey and he had confessed to the crime. These same reports stated that the suspect had discarded the victim’s body in a trash bag in the garbage.

From an investigative stand point, this is an extremely difficult case.  First and foremost, you’re dealing with a criminal case that is 33 years old.  Secondly, the victim’s remains have never been recovered.  Witnesses may be difficult to locate, some of the detectives who worked on the case could be deceased, possible crime scenes may have been renovated or destroyed, case files could be misplaced, evidence could be compromised etc.  The neighborhood where the crime took place could be severely altered after so much time has passed.

If the suspect has supposedly confessed to the detectives, probably the most important part of the interrogation from a prosecutorial standpoint is if the suspect told the detectives things that only the killer would know.  Police detectives will always attempt to hold back from the public important details in a crime for just that reason.  It’s not uncommon to have people confess to notorious crimes.  It’s when you get down to specific issues that are unique to that specific crime is how detectives can weed out the sensation seekers from the real suspect.

The job facing the NYPD detectives will be going back and trying to recreate a crime scene from information obtained from the confession.  They will go over everything the suspect told them to see if they can find any type of physical evidence or eyewitness accounts to match his story.  They will be going over New York City Sanitation records to attempt to find out any information regarding trash pickup on the specific date and location that the suspect provided them.  They’ll attempt to locate the truck driver and any sanitation workers that were on the route on that day.  They’ll even go over city dump records in an attempt to locate the specific location in the dump where that specific truck off loaded its contents.

Attempting to file a criminal case against a defendant without any evidence other than a confession would be difficult at best.  The tragedy begins all over again for the victim’s family, who are again thrust into the limelight because of this horrible crime.

Get out of the office

As a private investigator, do you ever find yourself spending too much time in your office?  It is a necessary evil, what with writing reports, making calls, doing computer searches, sending out invoices, marketing clients etc.  But sometimes I think we can become chained to that office chair.  What’s more, I believe some of an investigator’s most important skills can erode because of it.

Let’s take interviews for example.  One of the most important skills an investigator can possess is that of interviewing.  It’s how we gain critical information which helps us solve cases.  How often have you foregone a personal interview for a phone one?  Oh sure, it’s quick and easy.  But there’s a price to be paid.  It is difficult to develop a rapport with a witness in a phone interview.  Your just a faceless voice on a phone.  How many times have you hung up the phone and realized you didn’t ask an important question or you felt pressed for time.   

In an in-person interview, I’ll spend 10/15 minutes talking to the person about their home, garden, hobby etc. before I get into the interview itself. People love to talk about things that interest them, and they become relaxed with your presence.  You can get a lot more information that way then just going right into questioning them.  You’re also developing and maintaining your people skills.

I think in this technology age we have a tendency to rely too much on the computer.  Don’t get me wrong, computers are great.  They have made our lives and our jobs infinitely easier.  But there is a price to pay, and that is we can become office bound.  If you don’t develop and utilize your people skills, you’ll lose them.

Being out of the office and on the street is like exercise.  You feel better, think clearer, and most important, you can make things happen.  I can’t tell you how many important interviews I got, how many neighbor tips I received, and how many important witnesses I was able to subpoena just because I went out there and did something.

I had a veteran police detective tell me when I first started out as an investigator that you don’t solve cases by sitting in your office waiting for the phone to ring.  You have to go out there and make things happen.  So push yourself away from that desk, turn off your computer, grab that case file and get out there and do something!  You’ll feel better for it and you’ll solve cases.

UTILIZING FORENSICS

When I first started out working homicide, I was at a crime scene with a forensic team that was assisting us in the crime scene investigation.  One of the items of interest in this case happened to be a box that had fallen from either a table or a shelf to the floor.  I remember that the Forensic team kept running multiple test experiments with the box to see if it fell in the exact place each time.  When I questioned them, they advised me they were testing to see if it always fell in the same place or if it had been moved there by the suspect.

Forensic people look at things from a scientific and analytical viewpoint.  If something happened to a person, item etc., there must be a cause and effect as to how a it happened.  Could a body weighing the same as a suicide victim have hung themselves from a certain height and item (Pole, railing, shower rod etc.) without the item breaking or falling?  Could a spent cartridge at a shooting scene have landed in a certain location?  Could a left handed suspect have stabbed an individual incurring the same wounds as the stabbing victim?  Could a pry tool allegedly used by burglary suspect have made the same indentations as the ones at your crime scene?  Forensic people are always running tests to see if this is the case.

Whether you’re a police detective or a private investigator, the key thing to take away from this is don’t just assume that everything at a crime scene or accident scene is as it should be.  Question things!  If necessary, seek out experts.

Solving the NYC Hollywood Mask Robbery

At the end of February 2012 there was a unique crime in New York City that made national news.  Three suspects robbed a check cashing store of $200,000 dollars.  The thing that set this crime apart from other robberies was that the suspects were wearing blue police-like jackets with the NYPD logos on them along with police type badges around their necks.  They all wore sunglasses and two of the suspects were wearing NY Yankee baseball hats.  The media also reported that the police think the suspects may have been wearing expensive, whole head Hollywood style masks.  They may not even know the ethnicity or race of the robbers.

How do detectives go about solving this type of crime?  Because the crime was caught on the store’s video, they will examine every frame of the film to look for any idiosyncrasy they can find on the suspects, such as a scar, tattoo, mark, watch ring etc. that the film reveals.  They’ll canvass every store and mail order business that specializes in whole head masks looking for similar purchases.  They’ll be contacting makeup artists who may have had some recent clients around the time of the robbery.  They’ll be contacting other police agencies nationwide to see if they have had any similar crimes and suspects.  Get-a-way SUVs were used in the crime.  They’ll be looking for stolen vehicles that were similar to the ones used and looking to find both where they were stolen and recovered.  There’s a chance that one or more of the suspects may have been arrested in their past for a similar robbery using the same MO.  If so, they’ll want to know everything they can about that crime, including interviewing the detectives who handled that investigation.

One of the most important tools in solving this crime is getting information from informants.  Suspects have friends, wives, girlfriends, drug suppliers and competitors who all have information about what went down.  The suspects had to get police-like badges, jackets, masks and vehicles to pull this off.  That’s a lot of working parts and other people would have to either be involved or have some knowledge.  Vice, narcotic and plainclothes detectives will be or should be talking to every arrestee in the city along with their regular informants to find out who knows something.  Whether they’re working off an arrest, greed or revenge, somebody is going to talk.  When that happens, the heat is on and the case will be solved.