Table Of ContentThe Process of Investigation:
Concepts and Strategies
for Investigators in the
Private Sector
Fourth Edition
CHARLES A. SENNEWALD, CSC, CPP
JOHN K. TSUKAYAMA, PhD, MLitt
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Dedication
To
Tottie and Art Sennewald
Precious
Yeshua
Denise
Spike
Preface
We noted when this book was first published in 1981 that for too long the art and science of profes-
sional investigation had been deemed the exclusive realm of the public sector. Textbooks on investiga-
tion traditionally had been written by and for those in public law enforcement, and, invariably, these
books included such topics as homicide and rape. Although interesting, these subjects have little, if any,
practical application for investigators in the private sector. In the three and a half decades since, the
private sector has fully come of age and, in some areas, has been at the forefront of the development of
new techniques and professional practices.
This book is written to serve the needs of this recognized professional class of investigative practi-
tioners. We have tried to cover in detail those investigative skills that will always be essential in private
security investigation: surveillance techniques, interviewing and interrogation, evidence, confessions,
and written statements, among others. An effective book on investigation must go beyond mere detail,
however; the investigators in the real world, and thus this book, must deal with the day-in-and-day-out
challenges that confront them. Throughout the book, we have included cases and examples based on
our own experiences, as well as those of keen investigators of centuries and millennia past. In this
fourth edition, we again have folded in the unique talents of two other nationally known experts whose
experience clearly enhances the value of this material. In dealing with such a wide variety of situations,
we share the approaches and strategies that have helped each of us in the hope that they can be of some
assistance to others.
Thirty-five years is a long time for a book to remain useful. We are encouraged by the academics
and professionals who urged the continued publication of this text. We have striven to remain close to
the text’s original ideas: investigation is an endeavor improved by an approach that blends art and
science into a craft capable of uncovering truth and serving the ends of justice, both private and
public.
xix
Acknowledgments
Two of the experts involved in the development and training of computer forensic techniques have
kindly allowed their wisdom to be shared through this book. They are Michael R. Anderson formerly
of New Technologies, Inc. and Carlton Fitzpatrick of the Financial Fraud Institute, Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), US Department of the Treasury. We are indebted to them for
their willingness to bolster our admittedly scanty knowledge in this arcane area.
We are also grateful to Doug Wicklander and Dave Zulawski for contributing their expertise to our
effort to provide investigative strategies for students and professionals alike.
xxi
About the Authors
Charles “Chuck” Sennewald CSC, CPP, is an independent security management consultant and
expert witness. He is the author of numerous Butterworth-Heinemann titles, such as Effective Security
Management; Security Consulting; Retail Crime, Security, and Loss Prevention: An Encyclopedic
Reference; From the Files of a Security Expert Witness; and earlier editions of this book, The Process
of Investigation. He also authored other works, such as Shoplifting: Managing the Problem (published
by ASIS International); Jesus’ World (published by Cross books); and a number of fictional works.
Chuck is a graduate of California State University, Los Angeles, with a BS in police science and admin-
istration. He is also the founder and first president of the International Association of Professional
Security Consultants (IAPSC) and a life member of ASIS International. Chuck has lectured and is read
in countries around the globe.
John Tsukayama spent twenty-four years as a specialist investigator, starting with the US government.
In his twenty-two-year career in the private sector, he led joint public-private investigation teams while
exercising authority as a law enforcement appointee. John’s areas of practice concentration included
private sector investigations of theft of goods, embezzlement of funds, drug use and sales in the work-
place, and illegal discrimination. He also conducted public sector investigations involving financial
crimes, public corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and political campaign fundraising crimes. In
addition, he specialized in high-stakes threat assessment and management to prevent targeted violence.
He formerly held the designations of Certified Protection Professional (CPP), Certified Fraud Exam-
iner (CFE), and Professional Certified Investigator (PCI). John holds a PhD from the University of St.
Andrews School of International Relations, as well as a Master of Letters in terrorism studies (Distinc-
tion) and a BA in interdisciplinary studies (political science/history).
Currently John teaches international relations, political philosophy, and terrorism studies classes. He is
also writing and doing research in political violence and is preparing to conduct research on American
counterintelligence during the Cold War.
xxiii
CHAPTER
1
THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS
An investigation is the examination, study, searching, tracking, and gathering of factual information
that answers questions or solves problems. It is more of an art than a science. Although the person
engaged in investigation is a gatherer of facts, he or she must develop hypotheses and draw conclu-
sions based on available information. The investigative process, that is to say, is a comprehensive
activity involving the collection of information, the application of logic, and the exercise of sound
reasoning.
The end result of an investigation is the factual explanation of what transpired, if the incident or
issue is history, or what is occurring, if the issue is of the present.
The investigative process is not limited to the criminal justice and security fields. It is an activity
found, to one extent or another, in virtually all areas of human endeavor. Academicians are investiga-
tors, supervisors faced with disciplinary problems are investigators, antique appraisers are investiga-
tors, medical doctors are investigators—just to name a few. Sherlock Holmes, with his deerstalker hat
and magnifying glass, may be the art’s most familiar image, but investigation does not belong exclu-
sively to the arena of crime or the realm of cops and robbers.
Just as the art of investigation belongs to no one province, so no one has all the answers as to pre-
cisely how any investigation can lead to the desired solution. Too many facets are involved in the pro-
cess of collection of information, application of logic, and the use of sound reasoning. Some such facets
include intuition, luck, mistakes, and the often touted “gut feeling.” No single textbook of formulas is
possible; no one book (or author) can stand alone as the ultimate authority. Our purpose, then, is to
provide an overview of investigative concepts, strategies, suggestions, guidelines, hints, and examples
that can be useful to any investigator.
TWO CATEGORIES OF INVESTIGATION
There are two categories of investigation: constructive and reconstructive. Constructive investiga-
tions are covert in nature, performed in secrecy. This type of inquiry occurs while the suspected
activity is taking place or anticipated. An example might be an investigation into a complaint that a
member of middle management solicits sexual favors from female subordinates and reaps favors
accordingly. The purpose of the constructive investigation is to determine if objectionable activity is
taking place.
Reconstructive investigations are necessary when an event has taken place and the investigator must
recreate what happened after the fact. This type of investigation is usually overt in nature, carried out
in the open.
The Process of Investigation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800166-0.00001-2 3
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
4 CHAPTER 1 THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS
THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS
As it pertains to the security industry, the investigative process is organizationally oriented as opposed
to being community oriented. Its objective in this setting is to seek answers to the basic questions—the
what, who, where, when, how, and why—regarding a condition, incident, or action deemed organiza-
tionally unacceptable, or to meet organizational objectives. Internal dishonesty, for example, is an
organizationally unacceptable activity. The background investigation of a prospective new employee
would meet one organizational objective.
Most of the investigative process takes place in the collection of information. This gathering or col-
lection is based on communication and observation. The answers to the six basic investigative questions
are developed through communication—that is, the written or spoken word; or observation—that is,
physical evidence that can be observed (whether by human eye or microscope), touched, or in any way
quantitatively measured.
COMMUNICATION
Communication includes information received from informants, information developed through the
interview process, and information obtained in interrogations.
Consider a simple example. A homeowner, hearing the glass of his front window break, runs to the
room and commences an immediate inspection to determine the cause. He observes a baseball lying
among the pieces of broken glass. Sticking his head out of the broken window, ball in hand, he shouts
to a silent group of youngsters in the street. “Okay, you guys, which one of you did it?” As he asks the
question, simultaneously he observes that a boy named Harry is holding a baseball bat. Based on the
facts thus far gathered, he forms a hypothesis that Harry struck the ball with the bat, causing the ball to
enter the homeowner’s living room through the window.
Up to this point, the homeowner, in a natural investigative role as a victim, has had only the benefit
of his own powers of observation in forming his hypothesis. But now a couple of the boys in unison say,
“Harry did it.” The investigative process has advanced through communication from informants. “Did
you do it, Harry?” asks the homeowner. “Yes, sir,” answers Harry, dropping his head. The question and
its answer are two other basic elements of communication—interrogation and admission.
Ideally, as in this example, the investigator’s work is simplified if given some direction by an
informant, if witnesses are available and willing to cooperate, or if a suspect is known and can be
interrogated. Such simplification is not to suggest that all is easy in the communications aspects of
investigation. Quite the contrary! Developing informants, or developing a climate in which employ-
ees or nonemployees voluntarily will confide in you is not easy. It takes talent. The ability to extract
painlessly all the information a witness may have requires training and experience. Only a skillful
interviewer can get the specialist to explain the workflow of the finance unit so it is comprehensible
and understandable.
Finally, the ability to interrogate, and in that interrogation to obtain voluntary admissions and con-
fessions, requires a high level of skill. The point to be drawn is that communication, although not neces-
sarily easy to manage well, is often extremely helpful to the investigative process. Unfortunately, it is
not always available. In such circumstances, investigators must rely totally on observation, at least
during the initial phases of the inquiry, as they seek to know the what, who, where, when, how, and why
of a situation.
THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS 5
OBSERVATION
Scientific technology, in such areas as DNA analysis, forensic computer data examination, fingerprint-
ing, high-speed and low-light videography, and document analysis, to name a few, plays a vital role in
the observatory aspects of modern investigation. In our judgment, perhaps too much emphasis has been
placed on technology and too little on human powers of observation. (Note: For an exercise in the
human powers of observation, see Figure 1.1.)
This is not to suggest that, because computers and cloud-based storage are so sophisticated, we
should return to only paper files and printed books. It is to emphasize that the common denominator of
information technology and paper records is the aggregation and recall of useful information. Total
reliance on computers leaves us vulnerable to prolonged power outages, a critical hard-drive crash, and
total information loss should a computer virus attack. In an investigation, we want to gather, organize,
FIGURE 1.1
What is wrong here? This cartoon can be used in investigator training classes by dividing the class into small
groups and challenging each group to identify as many errors as they can find. At the conclusion of the timed
period, each group shares its findings with the entire class—with widely varying and instructive results.
Source: This work originally appeared in the Protection of Assets Manuals published by the Merritt Company and
Tim Walsh in 1980 and 1981.
6 CHAPTER 1 THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS
analyze, and present factual information, and we should be able to conduct online research, dig through
mountains of paper, hold video conferences, prepare multimedia presentations, or use any other means
available to us.
A remarkably wider range of important information is available to us through our own powers of
observation than through the use of a laboratory. To see, touch, smell, and hear are all forms of observa-
tion. Did you ever touch the hood of an automobile to determine if it had been driven recently as evi-
denced by its warmth? Did you ever mark the label on a bottle of liquor to determine later if someone was
taking unauthorized sips? Such uses of the power of observation are as natural and commonplace as eat-
ing and breathing. Consider the example of a shopper who returns to a new car, parked in the shopping
mall’s lot, only to find a scratch, dent, or ding in the car door. It is predictable (natural and commonplace)
that this unskilled observer will promptly inspect the adjacent automobile to determine if any part of that
car reveals, at a height corresponding to the damage to the new car, any evidence of paint fragments that
would prove culpability—coloration of victimized vehicle on suspect vehicle, or vice versa.
If, in fact, the power of observation is natural and commonplace in seeking investigative answers
and solving problems, why is it that those who are professionally charged with conducting investiga-
tions fail to understand, fully appreciate, and maximize such powers? The answer, perhaps, can be
found in modern technology, which mitigates against our need to fine-tune our own faculties. Just a few
decades ago people had to rely on their own resources. We do not. We hardly tap our capabilities
because we do not have to. In our advanced and sophisticated society, there is relatively little need to
be observant. Take the weather as an example. Today we have twenty-four-hour access to specialized
cable stations that broadcast televised reports on tomorrow’s weather based on the use of real-time
satellite imagery. Through the Internet we can view the weather prediction for ourselves from govern-
ment satellite pictures that are literally “up to the minute.” Meteorologists predict; we accept. Yet, even
now, there are men and women who can predict the weather with remarkable accuracy by observing
nature in the raw—by observing cloud formation, density, coloration, direction, temperature fluctua-
tion, and so on. Divers and fishermen will tell you that on a calm day, when all the seagulls sit in the
water, bad weather is coming fast—and their predictions are at least as accurate as official forecasts.
In terms of observatory skills, people are only as resourceful as their needs. Consider life and death.
“Natural” births are currently the norm. To observe, if not assist, in delivery is quite a revelation to most
people today. In the not too distant past, most births were “natural.” As for death, what can the urban
man or woman know of the natural phenomenon when we live in a society where one’s loved one usu-
ally dies in a medical facility and is wheeled away while the grieving survivors are ushered out, and the
remains are not seen again until presented for viewing? In the not too distant past, the body, with all the
changes that naturally occur, was observed by the survivors. They saw, felt, and if there was undue
delay, smelled the effects of death. They may not have used the words now employed, but they knew
postmortem lividity and rigor mortis, and a great deal more.
Early “professional” investigators, not yet dependent upon what is commonly considered mod-
ern investigative technology, made superior use of keen observation, common sense, and healthy
skepticism in their investigations. The forerunners of the famed Scotland Yard Criminal Investiga-
tion Department (CID) Inspectors were a group of detectives in London who worked for British
magistrates at a small station on Bow Street. They were famous for their willingness to set out
within a quarter of an hour for any point in the kingdom where their dogged assistance in solving
crimes was needed. These detectives became known as the Bow Street Runners and operated from
1749 to 1839.
