Real life investigation as a job is a world different from how they depict it on TV. Experts say it’s usually boring, often spending a day doing nothing but surveillance or watching the activities of the subject under close watch. However, all that can be changed. You can be a private investigator like the ones you see on TV, dealing with crimes and private investigations plus the adventure. Here’s how to do it:
Earn a Law or Criminology Degree
Doing private investigation as a career involves professionalizing in the field. There is the need to be familiar with deductive reasoning, surveillance, forensics, research, interrogation, police psychiatry, marksmanship, and self defence, to name a few. So that means earning a degree either in law or criminology so you can be a private investigator like the ones you see on TV. They all are professionals and licensed, like Magnum PI, Jake and the Fat Man, Dan Tanna in Vegas, Steve Mcgarrett in Hawaii 5-0, and so on. And make sure to pass the board examinations, too.
Start as a Police Rookie
After graduating in Law or Criminology, start making a name as law enforcer by joining the local police force. Once you become an inspector or investigator and gain the reputation as one, you can start doing it in private practice. This way, you start building up your clientele and also gain connections with the local police force. Key connections with the local police force help in solving crimes, just like what they do on TV or in movies. Then you can be a private investigator like the ones you see on TV.
Advertise
Let people know where to get expert help for crimes and private investigations. Put your service on signages, billboards, and in major dailies. Distribute business cards and advertise online. Connect with lawyers, crime labs, coroners, and funeral service people who may know of folks who need services about crime and private investigations. And as you give satisfactory service, your clients will help you promote through word-of-mouth.
Build Connections with Street People
Crime and private investigations need information that may have leaked out to the grass roots. Some news travel fast in the streets and folks who make their living out there are apt to know something relevant about a case. So it pays to have public relations with street people—vendors, bums, gasoline station personnel, cab drivers, out-of-school-youth, the jobless, etc. That’s how they do it on TV and that’s how you can be a private investigator like the ones you see on TV.
Read Mystery and Detective Books
Aside from your formal education on law or criminology, it will help to read mystery and detective books for exercising analytical skills and broadening the imagination. Most mystery and detective fiction writers do their stories with a lot of research, and that can help stir up interest and inspiration in various fields of specialized investigation, like toxicology and chemistry.
With added insights into other possible ways of crime perpetration, as the twists in mystery books provide, the imagination can be open to new possibilities. Such open-mindedness and rich imagination can sometimes be helpful in crime and private investigations. Then you get better perspective than the competitor. And then you can be a private investigator like the ones you see on TV.