Informative story about private investigators in the UK.

There are between 4,000 and 5,000 of them now active. The stereotype is of the disgraced police officer, thrown off the force, all grubby raincoat and cigarette dangling from his lower lip; or the lithe, brooding, silent panther, with eyes in the back of his head, capturing the bad guys. Neither is quite right, nor quite wrong.

Despite our insatiable appetite for the PIs of stage and screen, it is their factual counterparts who are back in the spotlight due to the News International scandal. They are not pleased about it. One PI who agreed to speak to me anonymously said he was disgusted by what he had read. “I cannot believe that any decent detective would work with the tabloids in this manner,” he said. “Hacking into people’s private messages is the lowest of the low. If we can’t get what we need to know through legal methods then we are no good at our job.”

At present, there is no regulation of the private investigation industry. “It is a scandal,” says experienced and world-renowned investigator Ken Gamble, “that anyone can become a PI, whatever their skills or lack of them.” The IPI runs a professional and private investigation training course, but there is no legal requirement in the UK to undergo any kind of training.

Link:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8fb55d2e-cea1-11e0-a22c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1WFLVz3Ef