Private investigators sometimes do dangerous work. Often the people we investigate are doing something illegal and if they were to discover that their activities were being monitored they certainly wouldn’t be happy. Even those who aren’t breaking the law are usually doing something immoral – unfaithful partners are a good example. People from either category could respond violently if they knew we were keeping tabs on them.
However, they usually don’t suspect a thing. We take steps to make sure that all our private investigations are as discreet as humanly possible. It’s not just a safety issue, of course. When a person knows they’re under scrutiny they don’t behave naturally and we can’t collect evidence either of wrongdoing or of innocence so it is essential that we stay hidden.
Sometimes private detectives do have to come out in the open. Our process servers have to reveal themselves to get the job done and often the person being served with official documents gets pretty angry. We, like most private investigators, have to deal with that as best we can, and balance getting the job done with keeping our staff safe from harm.
There are a host of simple measure that detectives use to stay safe during private investigations. Making sure contact with operatives is maintained at all times goes a long way, and so does knowing the background of the people we’ll have to deal with over the course of an investigation. Knowledge is power, and that saying applies when we think about our own safety as well as the value of the results we provide.