Private Investigator Licensing
An Editorial
By
Rick Johnson
Rick Johnson & Associates
Published in NCISS, September, 2005
Colorado is one of only a handful of states that do not license, register, or otherwise regulate private investigators. Even a convicted felon can go into business as a private investigator in Colorado with little more than a telephone and a 50-cent business card... no questions asked.
The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies killed a proposal presented to the Colorado Legislature in 2000 by the Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado (PPIAC.)
From the Department’s decision:
...A potential for public harm exists in the unregulated practice of private investigators, but the extent of this potential harm does not appear to reach a threshold sufficient to warrant regulation.”
How the potential harm in Colorado differs from or is less significant than the potential harm that requires licensing in Texas, California, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and all of the other states that do license private investigators remains an absurd mystery.
There is a clear and present danger to Colorado residents by the failure of the state to license private investigators, and that danger will stealthily persist until right-thinking leaders in the legislature, the governor’s office, and other controlling bodies act to institute licensing.
The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies believes that the prospect of harm is a potential that doesn’t reach some arbitrary threshold, but the fact of the matter is that, unlike most other professionals, private investigators don’t tend to leave obvious evidence of their mistakes, misconduct, or incompetence.
Every day in Colorado, inexperienced private investigators take money in exchange for doing virtually nothing, sometimes for actually doing nothing. Every day in Colorado, an unethical private investigator breaks the law, commonly by invading the privacy of another without just, reasonable, and legal cause to do so. Every day in Colorado, a private investigator takes on an assignment for which he or she is unqualified, providing a pattern of conduct and a result that actually may be contrary to the best interests of the client.
Perhaps 20 out of every hundred private investigators in Colorado, who conduct surveillance, know and understand the difference between surveillance and stalking.
Attorneys who should know better, often ask for protected bank records and other types of protected information, and there are private investigators out there who will use some agency to illegally obtain the information, placing the attorney and his or her client in jeopardy, should they ever have to explain how the information was obtained.
Every day, a private investigator in Colorado receives a telephone call from a man not personally known asking for help to locate a long lost girlfriend. Asking no questions, that private investigator finds her and then passes to the unknown caller her address, phone number, employer, even a description of the car she drives. I’ve received such calls, and when I inform the caller that, if I find the young woman, I’ll pass his information along to her and let her decide whether to respond, those callers almost always hang up. There’s a reasonable clue about what’s really going on.
It can take years to develop the skills and good sense that clearly describes the difference between a competent private investigator and a threat to the community. I have 30 years as a former Denver County and Jefferson County District Attorneys’ investigator and as an investigator in private practice, and I still learn something almost every day.
I don’t suggest that those are the credentials that every private investigator needs, but, if the people of Colorado are to be both served and protected, there just has to be a set of minimum standards and qualifications for the right to operate here – whether or not some bureaucrat can see the danger.
Rick Johnson is president of Rick Johnson & Associates of Colorado, Inc., 1649 Downing Street, Denver, CO, 80218, 303-296-2200. He is a former Investigator for the Denver County and Jefferson County District Attorneys’ Offices. He has been in private practice in Colorado since 1987. He is president of the Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado, although he is just representing himself in his comments in this proposed guest editorial.
Many of the investigators in the PPIAC are licensed in other states. Rick is licensed in Kansas via the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. He also carries Errors & Omissions Insurance in the amount of $1 million, something else that isn’t required in Colorado. Given the lack of licensing or any other type of regulation in Colorado, Rick also is president (and principal instructor) of the Private Investigators Academy of the Rockies, a periodic schedule of classes for new and prospective Colorado private investigators.