Private Investigator Technique: Canvassing Neighborhoods

What Does “Canvassing a Neighborhood” Mean?

Canvassing a neighborhood (also referred to as simply “canvassing”) means checking a neighborhood for:

• Evidence of someone living or visiting the area (such as locating the person’s vehicle).
• Verification from a neighbor or family member that someone lives at an address or may have recently visited there.
• Suggestions from friends or family members as to where a person might be.

Often, a PI will be straight-up and say she’s an investigator looking for an individual (this is what Dog the Bounty Hunter does—although some people he interviews will refuse to give up information about the skip (person being located), he usually convinces others it’s in the skip’s best interest to be found, and they give him the information he needs).

On the other hand, a PI might use a pretext (a story) or another identity (for example, pretend to be an old friend) to get people to divulge information.  In our business, we once pretended to be taking a survey (we showed up at every door in the neighborhood with our clipboards and pencils).  In the course of conversations with people who answered their doors, we slipped in questions about a particular person we were skiptracing (who used to live in the neighborhood) to see what information we could mine to his current whereabouts.

A Pet Investigation: Canvassing the Local Parks

We’re not pet detectives, but once we fell into just such a case.  A client lost several (three or four) Norwegian Elkhounds and asked if we could please help.  Our first thought was to do what we often do to find people: canvas the neighborhoods.  But instead of local residential streets, we canvassed parks.  And guess what.  We found the Norwegian Elkhounds in a park that had an undeveloped wildlife section and a lake.  In this case, canvassing neighborhoods worked.

Finding Missing Persons: Old-Fashioned Techniques that Are Still in Fashion

Updated 6-28-2012

A lot of people think today’s PIs just sit at computers and look up information.  That’s partly true–today’s PIs do a fair amount of

Putting the gum in gumshoe: getting out on the streets

research online, but that doesn’t mean the old, tried-and-true ways of investigating–on foot–aren’t still sometimes the best way to find information.

The information below focuses on some on foot  (hence the term gumshoe) investigative techniques that are still vital.

Old-Fashioned, but Still Valid, Gumshoe Techniques

Hard to believe there was a time without computers and databases, but once upon a time a sleuth looking for a missing person had to hit the streets, knock on doors, conduct surveillances, and do research on-site at court houses (and other places).  Some of these seemingly old-fashioned means are still valid (and often even more useful) than digging electronically.  Let’s look at some of these gumshoe tactics.

Hitting the Street, Knocking on Doors

Once we were driving in rush-hour traffic, tired after a day researching records in several courthouses, happy to be going home and calling it a day…then we got a call on our cell phone—a little girl had gone missing.

It was a case we’d already been working on (the little girl’s biological father was struggling with mental/drug issues, and the little girl’s grandparents—who had custody—had hired us to investigate his lifestyle).  Just that morning, before we’d left for our courthouse work, we’d researched where he might possibly have moved to (he’d withheld his new residence address from the grandparents) and we’d located a plausible street address, although we hadn’t double-checked it yet.

After getting the call, we quickly drove to this new possible address.  It was an old Victorian home remodeled into four apartments—we ran to the apartment we believed he lived in, but no one was home. Peering through the windows, we saw the place was empty, with trash and moving boxes piled inside. We began knocking on neighbors’ doors. No one was home. Being a little after five p.m., we figured most people hadn’t returned home yet from work.

We got a wireless connection on the laptop in the car and looked up the owner of the building through the county assessor’s office.  We called him, gave him the father’s name, and asked if he’d recently (or currently) lived in one of the apartments.  He denied knowing the name (later we learned he’d lied to us).

Then we spied a dumpster behind the apartment building and decided to check its contents, see if there were any clues to the little girl or her father … which we found.  This started a long evening of additional research, as well as sharing info with local law enforcement, to locate the little girl.  To bring this story quickly to a happy ending, by the time the sun came up, we’d found her (2,000 miles away at a relative’s).

You can see how much basic, physical work was involved in making this discovery.  Visiting a location, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and eventually crawling into a dumpster.

Some possible actions a sleuth might conduct to track a missing person:

• Research court records (for example, evictions, even traffic violations may contain information that indicates where the person might be living, their type of car, their workplace, or associates who can be interviewed about the person’s current location).
• Pulling driver’s records at the DMV (to pinpoint everything from a person’s physical description to their signature to recent addresses)
• Interviewing people who may have known the subject (for example, past and current neighbors as well as relatives, past and current landlords, co-workers and known associates).
• Surveilling places the person was known to frequent (friends’ or relatives’ homes, bars, workout clubs, etc.)

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How Do Private Eyes Do That? available on Kindle and Nook.

How Do Private Eyes Do That?