The road to a person becoming missing is often a complicated one. Before being directly targeted, many individuals require support to ensure their personal safety, or assistive surveillance to stay ahead of potential threats. At every stage of this complicated issue—from minimizing risk to being able to find people who have vanished—the private investigator offers a unique and multi-faceted skillset. Here, we’ll explore why this role is so important, and how a PI goes about launching a people search, and what steps they take to keep people safe.
Why Private Investigators Help to Protect and Find People
Hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing across the United States every year, however these statistics sadly only reveal the tip of the iceberg. This is because the parameters that justify police involvement either when a person suspects that they are under threat or even when someone has vanished are narrow.
Those who are vulnerable—or even their loved ones in the case of an abduction—often turn to private investigators because they know that acting early and acting fast is essential. Even once police do mobilize in these kinds of cases, their resources are limited, making a skilled and specialist professional able to mount a people search or make threat assessments a vital asset in the effort to ensure personal safety.
Determining the Credibility of and Assessing Threats
Where police investigators may make only a superficial assessment of potential threats to persons, a private investigator’s role is to dive as deeply as the client feels is warranted. They can analyze threats made to you, your home, or your business, whether they were made verbally, physically, or digitally. With the threat identified, they will then assess whether the individual or individuals in question aim only to scare or intend to take direct action. If the latter is the case, the investigation will potentially transition into a violence threat assessment. In turn, the private investigator’s findings may assist in ensuring that the authorities take the situation seriously.
Assisting in Threat Management
Private investigator firms like Lauth Investigations International specialize not only in reacting to a crime, but also in active prevention. This will include making comprehensive security analyses, advising on best safeguarding practices, and liaising with the police, security companies, legal teams, and more. We can also provide thorough background checks on staff and security personnel to ensure that the enemy has not already made it through your perimeter.
Launching a People Search When Someone Goes Missing
If you, a colleague, or a loved one vanishes, make no mistake—when there is a need to find people, time is of the essence. With a 90% success rate, our dedicated Missing Persons Division has been bringing disappeared adults and children home safely for more than 30 years, and we will leave no stone unturned or trail unfollowed in the name of retrieving those you hold dear.
We combine physical searches—internationally, whenever required—with digital forensics, high-tech surveillance, canvassing and interviews, and in-depth background checks to piece together the essential details that will lead to those of whereabouts unknown. To learn more about how we can assist in personal safety and surveillance or locating missing persons quickly, simply contact our respective Threat Assessment and Missing Persons teams, because your safety and security is our top priority.