Pifeed StaffIn our 8 Hours with series, we speak with leading private investigators and security professionals to learn more about what they do on a days’ worth of work. We reach out to them at hourly intervals to see how they spent the day and document their activities.
On our first article of the series, we speak with Ulises Perez – the founder of Closure Investigative Agency an is a licensed Private Investigator in West Palm Beach. He specializes in surveillance investigations for domestic clients.
6:45 AM – Home Office
We’ve been locked in for nearly 2 months due to Covid, so I look forward to days when I can leave the house for work. During this quarantine lockdown, we worked on digital investigations. We conducted a lot of Social Media Investigations, Background Checks, Asset Checks, and Court Record Retrievals (when available online). We use Open Source Intelligence to help our clients find information and details about the subject of our investigations – prior to us heading out to the field.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve had enough time to reflect on the direction of my company. We’ve implemented new technology tools and processes to better serve our clients. Today’s case was started about 2 weeks ago.
I’m working on a child custody case from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. My field investigators are working on different cases throughout Florida.
8:30 AM – Surveillance
The purpose of the investigation today is to try and determine how many people visit our client’s children while they’re under the custody of their grandparents.
PI Feed: Has your surveillance setup changed to accommodate the Covid situation?
With the exception of extra “eyes” on you, nothing major has changed. Setting up in a neighborhood like the one I am today, is always going to be a challenge. I’ve done surveillance for over 10 years, and while the process is always the same, the setup and situations are always different.
When you setup for surveillance in a Wisteria Lane style neighborhood, people tend to be exceptionally aware of things, especially during the Covid lockdown. I’ve only had a few cases during the Covid situation, and every neighbor seems to be on the lookout for something out of place.
I parked far enough to where this won’t be a problem, but you still feel out of place.
10:00 AM – Surveillance
When I’m on surveillance, I’m trying to keep notes about the neighborhood as a whole. This is particularly important today because we found out a relative lives in the same neighborhood. I’ve conducted surveillance in the past where we find entire families living on the same street.
Based on what is happening here – this is starting to look like a similar situation. I’m mainly keeping tabs on what’s happening around me during surveillance. I’m taking notes, monitoring my surroundings, and updating my report to make my job easier later in the day.
12:30 PM – Surveillance Wrap UP
The surveillance was a success – our goal was to gather information on who visited our client’s children. We updated our client at the end of the surveillance, addressed any questions or concerns they may have, and provided them with a detailed surveillance summary. In this case, we didn’t have any extra tasks from the client, but if they did, we would add those tasks to our management platform and conduct what was needed. It’s now time to head back to the home office.
2:00 PM – Office Management
Most of my time after the surveillance is going to be spent in the office. Many of our clients don’t really see the back-end operations of the company, but this is where we spend a good 2 to 3 hours after the surveillance assignment wrapping up the case.
I’m processing the video in the background, uploading photos and still shots to our reports, and sending out a detailed update to the client. If the client has an attorney, we’re also updating the attorney via email and sending he attorney our report summary.
The final report won’t really be sent out until after the investigation has been completed and the case is ready to be wrapped up. Depending on the requirements of the investigation, we may / may-not send out video updates.
4:00 PM – Field Investigator Updates
This fluctuates from day to day, but we’re currently working on 3 separate cases at the same time. Part of my job as the president of the company is to update all my clients across the board. My field investigators submit their updates to me, and I contact our clients to make sure they’re updated.
This process usually takes about 2 hours – depending on the number of cases we’re working at the time. Nothing really much changes from what I did for my case. The only difference is that I’m limited to what’s provided to me by the field investigators. This is why we have such a high standard when it comes to writing our surveillance reports. I have to be able to understand what happened – if I can understand the report, and I can visualize what happened throughout the day, then our clients will also be able to visualize what we saw in the field.
6:00 PM – Wrapping up the day
Covid has turned our days around. At the end of the day, I’m still a father and a husband. I make sure, that at the end of the day, I spend time with my family. No interruptions. 100% full-time family bonding.
With that, my family time is about to begin.
