The Change Mariner

Here Come the Glamour Gumshoes

New York Times:

... In the old days, private investigation firms were staffed mostly by former police officers supplementing their pensions with a little gumshoe work. But times, along with the investigation and security industry, have changed. Private investigators now devote themselves to corporate background checks, high-tech surveillance, retrieving deleted e-mail messages from company hard drives and, of course, the occasional old-style sleuthing, like trailing cheating spouses.

These new snoops are more likely to have liberal arts or computer science degrees than experience walking a beat. They're much more likely to pack iPods than .38 Specials. And unlike Jake Gittes, the reluctant P.I. played by Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown," who urges the suspicious wife Mrs. Mulwray to "let sleeping dogs lie," today's young sleuths comb through databases to learn the particulars of private lives with the same sense of eagerness with which they might Google their next dates or play the latest edition of Grand Theft Auto.

"It's exciting and voyeuristic to be looking into people's lives." said Amy Gray, 28, a graduate of Brown, who wrote about her three years as a private investigator in "Spygirl" (Villard). "The work intrinsically has a satisfying quality of solving a puzzle or playing a video game. There's a `getting the bad guys' kind of feeling."

In recent years the number of college students studying forensic science has boomed, in part because media portrayals of private eyes and crime solvers in shows like "CSI" and "Cold Case" have glamorized the field, especially its computer-driven technical side. Where in the past P.I.'s were portrayed as "fumbling, bumbling people,'` said Robert J. Louden, a professor of science and protection management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, "more and more they're showing digital video and the use of electronic devices, which portrays it as high-tech and exciting."

Another reason is simple economic opportunity. Although there are no statistics about employment in the risk management industry — as private investigation companies now call themselves — many firms say that in the wake of last year's corporate scandals and the threat of terrorism, the paranoia business is booming. Revenues at Kroll, a 2,300-employee company with offices around the globe, were up nearly 40 percent in 2002, to $289 million, compared with 2001. Robert Tucker, 33, who is the chairman and chief executive of T&M Protection Resources, one of New York City's largest security and investigations firms, said his company now has 800 employees, six times as many as it had in 1999.

"If you're good at it, there's an untold amount of work," he said.

Perhaps the biggest change has been in the industry itself, which has come to favor computer-savvy database wizards over the old-school door-knocking detective. Mike Pattishall, 26, a researcher at Corporate Risk International in Fairfax, Va., said that by searching the online services his company subscribes to, he can get the skinny — court records, motor vehicle information, property filings, even photographs — on almost anyone.

"Where in the past it required sending a field agent out to gather information," he said, "now 9 times out of 10 you can find it online."

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