A BC Private Investigator or Professional Investigator is a civilian employed by a British Columbia private investigations company hired to investigate “subjects” by a customer. In BC, the customer is known as the "client." The “subject” is usually a person or persons but can also be a BC provincial business. The customer can be an individual, corporation, and even a BC government agency.
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What Does a BC Private Investigator Investigate?
The BC Private Investigator can investigate a wide variety of things; however, Private Investigators in BC mostly investigate insurance fraud for insurance companies. BC Private Investigators typically take on investigative cases that do not fall under the purview of a government agency, such as civil matters while BC government agencies will cover serious criminal cases. Because a Private Investigator is just a normal BC citizen, they do not have any special investigative privileges. A Private Investigator in the province of BC has the same authority of any BC citizen with the exception that a British Columbia PI is allowed to offer investigative services to customers and has the expertise in investigations.
BC Private Investigator Clients
The most common clients for Private Investigators in BC are insurance companies, law firms, private corporations, and BC citizens. Investigations conducted for these clients will frequently involve potential fraud. Other clients in BC will want to obtain more detailed information in order to adjudicate or manage an insurance claim. Many of these cases are mitigated through the hiring of a BC Private Investigator. They can include both surveillance and non-surveillance efforts. BC investigations often obtain more information faster than legal processes such as discovery (the pretrial disclosure of relevant evidence), thus providing the Investigator’s clients more information for decision-making. The Investigator’s clients can ask for investigations in BC on a wide variety of topics such as,
Interviewing and Statement-Taking
Network & Data Cyber Security
Forensic Investigations
Theft Investigations in BC
Security Consulting
Accident Investigations & Reconstructions
Asset Recovery Investigations
BC Process Serving
Arson Investigations in BC
BC Private Investigator Legislation
Most people think that BC Private Investigators are granted extra provincial BC legislative powers; however, this is not entirely true.
A provincial PI is just a civilian but has developed more tools than the general public and is more skilled and aware of how best to leverage those tools.
Furthermore, in British Columbia, Investigators legally have the right to conduct surveillance. This means a BC Investigator cannot be accused of loitering. Make no mistake, Investigators in BC have legal means and methodologies that make them effective. In contrast, the police have access to vastly more verifiable information, such as BC provincial wide data bases only accessible by law enforcement. For a PI, much of the time, is spent in establishing or verifying information.
British Columbia PI Criminal Investigation
Investigating crime in BC or more correctly, investigating serious crime in BC is usually under the purview of BC government agencies. So, do Private Investigators in BC ever investigative serious crime. Short answer no, long answer yes with a “but.” Private Investigators in BC can and do investigate serious crime; however, it is very rare. What a BC Professional Investigator will investigate most in their career will be blue collar crimes such as insurance fraud. Furthermore, the few BC Private Investigators who have investigated serious crime have done so with large obstacles in their way.
Who would ask a BC Professional Investigator to investigate a serious crime? Typically, it is a family member or someone close to the victim or victims of a serious crime who was not satisfied with the local BC police investigation. This is not to say that the police investigation was poorly executed, just that the client was not satisfied with the investigative outcome for whatever reason.
BC Private Investigator Criminal Investigation Obstacles
The obstacles that BC Private Investigators face when investigating serious crime are two-fold:
the obvious first issue is access to evidence
the second, not so obvious, issue is economics
Private Investigators in BC are not what you see portrayed on movies and television. They do not sit around a noir style office in BC waiting for a serious crime file to be placed on their desk. BC Private Investigators need good constant revenue streams, investigating serious crime in BC is not one of them. As mentioned before, constant revenue stream comes from fraud investigations, at least for most BC Private Investigators. The issue of economics even makes it difficult for an individual to even find a BC Private Investigator who will investigate a serious crime.
BC Private Investigators
So, who are the Private Investigators in BC who specialize in investigating serious crime? There are non. Yes, there are Investigators who have successfully investigated a serious crime or two, and became famous for it, but if you look into their career you will see that serious crime investigations makes up a very small portion of their history. This article is not to downplay BC Private Investigators who have investigated and solved serious crimes. A PI who has investigated and solved a serious crime in BC should be proud. The ability to become a Private Investigator in BC who has gained a reputation that will make clients confident that they can solve a serious crime is impressive.
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