#MondayBlogs Answering Writer’s Question: When Does a PI’s Activity Become Intimidation?

Today we respond to a writer’s question about PIs and intimidation.

Writer’s Question: When does surveillance, or any legitimate investigative activity, become intimidation?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s Answer: Many investigative activities (such as surveillance, knocking on doors and attempting interviews, service of subpoenas) can be done in such a manner to intimidate the target of an investigation. The legitimate activity can be so pronounced and intense that the subject not only knows they’re being investigated, they fear the person who’s hired the investigator (or they fear the investigator him/herself). This is intimidation. An example of an intimidation is to leave a dead fish on the windshield of someone’s car with a rose in its mouth (which L.A. investigator Anthony Pellicano did to intimidate a newspaper reporter ). This reporter was a witness before an official proceeding and Pellicano was charged for intimidating a witness with this not-so-subtle gift of seafood.

While the FBI agents in The Sopranos could sit at the foot of Tony’s driveway and even chat with him on occasion (which is not covert surveillance), they could not attempt to run his car off the road or interfere with his business because those acts constitute intimidation (or police harassment).

Private investigators are regularly asked by bill collectors to visit debtors. This is a dicey area because federal credit collection practice laws permit contact but they don’t permit collectors to threaten with bodily injury or improper damage to the debtor’s reputation. Any time that a debtor can prove that a PI is guilty of these acts then the PI is personally liable, his firm his liable, and the collection agency is liable. Your fictional PI might be employed to knock on doors and collect money, discourage witnesses to testify in a court case, or take photographs of an individual and his/her home, car, workplace, etc. When these acts are done to intentionally frighten the witness and/or drive them from either testifying or bringing a claim in court, those actions are legally classified as intimidation.

Writing PIs

The Line Between Investigation and Intimidation: How Not to Cross It

There’s a line between investigation and intimidation.  Anthony Pelicano not only crossed it, but stomped on it, when he left a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on a witness’s windshield.  Then there’s the recent media story about a famous movie star who hired private investigators to visit witnesses and make a “forceful impression” so they wouldn’t testify in a legal proceeding.  Sounds like the movie star had been in a few too many movies.  In the real world, the law steps in when an investigator causes a reasonable person to become fearful–in such cases, the investigator may be charged with intimidation.

But the line between investigation and intimidation can get fuzzy.  A private investigator may feel confident he calmly asked a few questions in a direct but unimposing way, then later be accused of intimidating behavior.

There are techniques investigators can use to protect themselves from being accused of intimidation, from documenting encounters to keeping clients under control and at a distance.  One of our Writing PIs wrote about these techniques in her article “When Does Legitimate Investigative Activity Become Intimidation” at PINow.com (click on article title to read it).

Have a good week, Writing PIs