You might think that a private investigator would have no role in a criminal investigation. Crimes committed are the province of law enforcement: it is up to the police to investigate and solve crimes. Why bring a private detective in on the case? Is it even legal to do so?

The answer to the first question is simple: law enforcement is not infallible, nor do they always have the time and manpower to investigate a crime they might not consider a high priority. If you are the victim, however, solving your crime is of the highest priority to you, regardless of how the police view it. If your desire is really to get to the bottom of things, you need someone investigating on your own behalf – and that someone would be a private investigator.

Our operatives at The NJF Group are law enforcement-trained and know their way around a criminal investigation. We possess the skill set to delve into the evidence in and find with the answers our clients need.

Involving a private detective in a criminal case is not unusual. Most P.I.s are able to work in cooperation with law enforcement, their joint goal being to solve the crime. That certainly is how we work. The more brainpower working on a case, the faster the solution will be found. The client should understand that we are not trying to outsmart the police or to overstep their authority: at the heart of any good investigation is the desire to uncover the truth.

If you want the truth, there is no better way to arrive at it than by having someone with your interests – and only your interests – in mind while working on the case.

You have no control over the actions of law enforcement: they aren’t answerable to you directly, and they operate with their own priorities. A private detective, however, is working for you: he can stay on the job as long as is necessary, his goal being to solve the crime in a manner that is satisfactory to the client. He has two things on his side that the police often lack: time and patience. People often feel frustrated by the police’s perceived lack of responsiveness – that alone is good enough reason to bring in a P.I. on a criminal case.

A private investigator may also be your only way of solving a case that the police have abandoned. We frequently take on “cold” cases. Through perseverance and grit, we have managed to uncover the answers for which our clients had been searching, often for years.

There is another situation in which the hiring of a private detective on a criminal matter is imperative: in the event that you should find yourself wrongly accused of a crime, and feel that law enforcement isn’t making the necessary efforts to discover the real culprit. A private detective will help you establish your innocence by collecting evidence and by looking at the case from the opposite perspective from the one the police have been using.

A private investigator could well be your last hope. If you find yourself accused of a crime you know you did not commit, you should call an investigator as soon as is possible. Time is always of the essence in a criminal investigation, as trails grow cold very quickly.

  • If you or someone you know is the victim of a crime you don’t feel the police are investigating thoroughly enough, or
  • if law enforcement has written your case off as “cold”, or
  • if you feel that law enforcement has made you a prime suspect for a crime you didn’t commit,