Surveillance is not all fun and car chases.  It can be rather demanding on you both physically and mentally.  It often requires working early morning hours, late evening hours, and many weekends and holidays.  What is the primary trait required to be successful at surveillance?  Patience!  Surveillance requires hours upon hours of waiting and watching, watching and waiting.  You can not allow your concentration to break from the task at hand.  Activity can take place in seconds and if you are daydreaming or changing the station on the radio, you could miss it all.  Please note that the words “claimant” and “subject” are used interchangeably, but are always referring to the party that you are conducting the surveillance on.

I once performed surveillance for six days, ten hours per day, and only obtained 17 seconds of video.  Knowing only this information would make most people wonder just how good of an investigator I was.  However, the truth is that this brief video won the case for my client and saved them over $300,000.  The claimant in that case alleged that he was paralyzed from the waist down and that he required the use of a wheelchair everywhere he went.  On one rainy afternoon the claimant was preparing to leave his house, and his wife had carried his wheelchair to the car.  The claimant ran from the house to the car, found the door locked, and ran back inside the house.  A few seconds later, he ran back to the car and climbed inside.  Approximately 20 minutes later the claimant arrived at his doctor’s office.  He now required his wife’s assistance to get out of the car and had to be placed in the wheelchair.

At the trial, the claimant entered the courtroom in his wheelchair and told the court that he had been unable to use his legs since the date of the accident, and that it was impossible for him to stand.  The few seconds of video showing the claimant running completely discounted the claimant’s charge that he was paralyzed.  Imagine if I had gotten bored and decided to read the newspaper for a while.  I would have missed this activity and a fraud would most likely have walked away with a very large sum of money from settlement or award.

Surveillance is not easy.  It is a task that even when performed to perfection can result in the appearance of incompetence.  First of all, you cannot make a claimant come out of his or her house and perform some activity for you to document.  You can try to gain as much intelligence as possible from your client, but you still may know nothing more about the claimant than his name, address, and description as a white male, average height, average build, with medium to dark hair.  A person matching that description leaves the claimant’s residence, but turns out to be the wrong person.  You can sit and watch a claimant for days with no activity.  Later, they leave the house and within 30 seconds you have lost contact with them due to heavy traffic, or getting caught at a traffic device.  You could even get caught by the claimant or by a neighbor.  It happens to us all.

Even the most skilled, highly trained, and best equipped investigators face these problems.  It is the most frustrating feeling in the world.  Learning skills such as how to gather pre-surveillance information, where to establish your surveillance position, how close to tail the claimant, and how to anticipate turns comes from practice and experience.  The more surveillance you conduct, the better you get at it.

Larry Davis

Private Investigation Instructor

Ashworth College

I have had many occasions to use the Internet to search for information related to evidence submitted to the laboratory.  One recent case involved an auto theft in which the suspect stole the vehicle and then crashed it during his joyride.  During the crash, the vehicle’s driver’s side airbag deployed.  The suspect was apprehended a short distance away from the crash site and the arresting officer noticed a semicircular residue pattern on the suspect’s white t-shirt in addition to an abrasion pattern on the side of his face.  The suspect denied any knowledge of the stolen vehicle and denied being in the vehicle.  He stated that the abrasion on his face and the residue pattern on his shirt were due to a scuffle he had had earlier in the evening.  The shirt and the airbag from the vehicle were submitted to the laboratory along with a request to look for any evidence which would place the suspect in the vehicle.  The initial examination of the suspect’s shirt revealed a brownish residue pattern in which a stitched design was visible.  This pattern was consistent in size and shape with the stitching pattern on the front of the airbag.

To learn more about how airbags are constructed and how they operate, I searched the Internet and found the manufacturers’ websites for the major manufacturers of airbags.  These sites provided a wealth of information about how airbags are designed and the construction and composition of the bags.  The sites also provided information about the propellants and the initiators used to create the gases which inflate the airbags upon impact.  I also found information about the cornstarch based powder which is used during the folding and packing of airbags.

With the information I gained from the search, I was able to analyze residue from the suspect’s shirt and conduct analyses to show that the residue on his shirt contained materials consistent with the propellants used in airbags and that cornstarch granules were also present which were consistent with the material used in packaging airbags.  I also compared the residue pattern and spacing on the shirt to the stitching pattern of the airbag to show that they were consistent.  When presented with the laboratory results, the suspect changed his story and later pled guilty to the crime.

It should be noted that I am constantly visiting manufacturers’ websites to gain information about shoe sole patterns and tire tread designs.  There are also many legal websites containing information about recent court cases and court decisions in reference to forensic evidence.  Let me share a few of my favorite forensic web sites with you.

An Introduction to Forensic Firearms Identification

Crime Scene Investigation

Crimes and Clues

Larry Davis

Private Investigation Instructor

Ashworth College

Clients may be very emotional when discussing an injury that has occurred either to them or to someone very dear to them.  You must be sensitive to these issues, so as not to upset the client and to maintain a positive working relationship with the client.  As you know, you are not allowed to offer either legal advice or emotional advice to the client.  You are about to become an expert in the legal profession—not an expert psychologist.  It is a delicate balance, then, to make sure you are sensitive to the client without imparting advice about what you think the firm’s client needs to do, think, or feel.

Keep in mind that your best guidance comes from focusing on being a professional.  We do not want to overstep boundaries that are not ours to cross.  Instead, we need to maintain a positive working relationship with clients, so we can best represent their legal interests.  Throughout our studies, we will learn much about “attorney-client relationships” and “paralegal-client relationships.”  We will come to appreciate that our clients are the heart of our work.  As their agents, our efforts must revolve around their best interests.  Without clients, we could not be legal professionals, and it is imperative that we maintain the most positive relationships with them that we can.

Dan Mitchell

Paralegal Training Course Advisor

Ashworth College