Private Investigators and the Police

I’ve had a little look at private investigators before. I am doing it because I am interested in cold cases.  I am doing it because I have watched too much film noir when I was a kid… So when I started looking into cold cases, I asked about private investigators in another post.  The question is do the police use private investigators in cases?  If they do what are the guidlines for them using them?  Only one way to find out…

Now I am deliberately not going to ask the Welsh Authorities on this matter.  Simply because I have been a bit too bothersome with them lately, and I want to give them a bit of breathing space. So I have decided to use the top 10 most complained about police service (excluding the MPS, because they stated that they are getting a very heavy case load, a little a while back), simply because it I had done a bit of work on them before.

So I asked the police authorities the same questions, which were:

Has your authority ever used a private investigator to participate in any way with an active investigation since 01/01/2006

If the answer to the above question is yes, please could then then answer the following question

2) How many investigations has your authority used private investigators for

3) What were they asked to do

4) How much was paid to the investigators (in total) for their services on their case

5) What is the guidance given to your authority for the use of private investigators

The reasons for these is because if they do use private detectives, then surely we can see what they have been doing for us, isn't it? The answers are:

Name	Use?	Amount	Asked to do	Paid	Guidance
Greater Manchester Police	Never	NA	NA	NA	NA
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary	Never	NA	NA	NA	NA
West Yorkshire Police	Never	NA	NA	NA	NA
Avon and Somerset Constabulary	Never	NA	NA	NA	NA
Thames Valley Police	Never	NA	NA	NA	NA

To make you aware, when they asked me for clarification on what is a private investigator, I simply answered “Anyone registered as a Private Investigator with the Security Industry Authority (As I discussed in another post).

So it seems that they have never used a Private Investigator.  Hmm…  Well, that's fair enough, I suppose. They are, after all, unauthorised people working on official cases.  Which does make me wonder about some of the things that happened during the phone hacking scandal here in Britain. If these police forces did not use them, would they ever keep a record of it?