Why Private Detectives Are Needed: An Explanation.

In the media, private detectives such as the investigators of our detective agency in Bremen are frequently labelled as "snoopers". This derogatory categorisation appears in television productions as well as in audio, print and online media. In recent years, the much-discussed, more or less anonymous user comments under newspaper articles on websites and, of course, in social networks have been added to this. These often not only reveal a great deal about the upbringing of some authors, but also give a quite serious and authentic picture of the public perception of detectives.

 

The number of those who recognise the usefulness and necessity of detective evidence-gathering is often outweighed by those who see no justification for "snooping" – even when, for example, a notorious malingerer who is causing substantial damage to his employer can only be exposed by the investigations of IHK-certified corporate detectives. The intrusion into privacy is deemed unacceptable and the profession in general labelled as for "Stasi snoopers" who stand under their partners’ slippers at home – such and more can be read. Unfortunately, this perception only illuminates one side of the coin and clearly takes sides – not for the victims (in the example of the malingerer = the employer), but for the perpetrators (the employee)! Why this argument is short-sighted and why qualified private detectives make an important contribution to society is what Kurtz Detective Agency Bremen would like to explain below.

False Expectations: From Real Scandals, Violent TV Detectives and Miraculous Abilities ...

That the detective profession has a disreputable reputation for many people is partly self-inflicted, namely by individuals who harm the reputation of the entire industry. Mostly, however, the standing of the profession is scratched by a number of external factors that impinge on the German investigative sphere. One is politics, which even some 150 years after the founding of the first German detective office in Dresden (by H. L. Römer) still has not managed to create admission requirements for practising as a private investigator. As a result, any citizen with a criminal record certificate that shows no entries can register a detective business – whether qualified or completely clueless. Untrained wannabe investigators are of course unfamiliar with their legal powers, which leads them to accept assignments for which the fundamental legitimate interest does not exist. Moreover, they resort to disproportionate and therefore illegal means in their "investigations". Thus, in 2008 the magazine stern exposed the notorious LIDL scandal, in which the discounter used some of the cheapest private detectives available on the market and paid dearly for it, because these cut-price detectives were, as one might expect, not the crème de la crème of our industry and carried out serious data protection breaches on behalf of the supermarket chain; employees were observed and photographed in their private spheres, bugged and filmed. The scandal detectives even documented the number of toilet visits at work and thereby permanently damaged the profession’s reputation among the public.

 

Furthermore, the media play a major part in the public perception of detectives. Scripted nonsense shows such as "Privatdetektive im Einsatz" with the acting and overly violent bodybuilder "Carsten Stahl" as the supposed head of a detective agency give viewers an equally preposterous false impression of the reality of detective work as "Die Trovatos", which centres on an embarrassing investigator family that illegally listens to targets with directional microphones, openly takes observation positions twenty metres from the observed persons, plays alleged live video surveillance on a tablet or laptop via Windows Media Player and records Christmas singles at Ballermann level in their free time. That these are not only low points of German television but also deliberate dumbing down of the public is shown by the frequent enquiries to our private detectives in Bremen, in which deceived husbands and desperate mothers of children refer to the dishonest methods of the aforementioned television investigators and demand the same from us.

 

Not only modern German productions convey a false impression; even quite high-quality media material about the detective profession leads people astray: the familiar clichés from American films about the backyard detective office (hardboiled) with a gruff, armed investigator and a disreputable femme fatale as client belong more to the realm of urban myths, the talent of the eccentric investigator "Monk" from the popular series to solve cases through a kind of vision of the crime borders on supernatural ability, and even the fairly realistic literary detective Sherlock Holmes fuels excessive expectations through the sheer genius of his deductions that hardly any real person can meet, perhaps with the Victorian Joseph Bell as a possible exception.

If the police do nothing and detectives are only snoopers, who is supposed to help victims?

Serious investigators such as our detectives from Bremen deliver court-admissible evidence. Who needs evidence? Victims. Should victims be protected? This question needs no answer. Who do detectives’ investigations harm? Perpetrators and, with very, very large reservations, wrongly suspected persons. Should perpetrators be protected? Certainly not from the disclosure of their criminal acts. The crucial issue here is the question of offender protection versus victim protection. Should one differentiate? Our private and corporate detective agency from Bremen must certainly do so, because the choice of investigative methods and the extent of surveillance depend largely on the suspected offence. The rule here is: actio equals reactio. We do not act in order to coerce law-abiding citizens into committing offences; rather, we observe criminal acts (whether legally or morally) to help the victims of these offences assert their rights. Incidentally, German case law sees it the same way, because detective costs incurred to expose an offender are recoverable.

 

Of course it happens that a client unjustly suspects a target person. That is why we try to interfere as little as possible with the personality rights of the person under observation during our surveillance. Whom should a deceived wife turn to if she is continually betrayed by her husband? Should she simply put up with it? That would certainly please some adulterers, and following their exposure there can sometimes be threats of violence against our "snoopers". But who is to blame: the one who commits the offence, or the one who observes it?

 

The same applies to cases of domestic violence, sexual abuse or maintenance fraud. Here, citizens become victims of offences where the competent authority was unable to help them (otherwise they would not turn to our private detective agency in Bremen). Without "snoopers", Mrs Müller would be beaten by her husband day after day. Without "snoopers", Mrs Meier’s daughter would cry herself to sleep night after night after "Dad" was sexually abusive again. Without "snoopers", Mrs Werner would not know how to pay for her children’s schoolbooks because the Porsche-driving father successfully claims in court to have no income. Without "snoopers", Mr Fischer would never see his only son again, as he is missing and cannot be found by anyone. These clients see no other way out of their misery than to commission our agency. Such an assignment by a victim is neither immoral, nor is a detective acting reprehensibly when taking on these cases and thus helping people in distress.

 

The same goes for our corporate detectives in Bremen: did you know that over half of all economic offences against German companies are committed by their own employees? As managing director of Schmidt Logistik GmbH, must you tolerate continuous theft of your property by your delivery drivers? Must the owner of the ambulatory care service Schneider accept that his carer on the road prefers to go to the casino rather than to his clients in need of care? Must the tax advisor Hoffmann stand by and watch while his employees are constantly overloaded and cannot complete their work on time because a colleague is permanently on sick leave? In a just world, hardly.

Detective Agencies Are Private Auxiliary Organs of the Rule of Law

Investigations, in particular surveillance, are interventions in the personality rights of the target person(s) – our Bremen agency can no more avoid this than any other investigative service, including the police, customs and tax investigators. However, our tasks include keeping these intrusions as minor as possible and only to the extent necessary. The proportionality of the means plays a just as decisive a role as the weighing up of the legitimate interest in an investigation. For example, it is almost always disproportionate to peep into a private dwelling; only a few exceptions relieve one from this rule, for example a concrete suspicion of an ongoing violent crime. The assessment of these legal particularities cannot be made reliably by laypersons. Good legal training is urgently required. That is why our private detectives in Bremen are IHK-certified professionals who have completed training as detectives. If you are looking for an investigator, do not be tempted by particularly low prices, but rather focus on the qualification of the personnel. Naturally, detective agencies can hardly provide references, because just like you our other clients wish to remain anonymous; distributing personal client data to prospective clients would be an unforgivable breach of trust.

 

The aim of every investigation is to obtain information, the human need for certainty. Law can only be administered if the injured party can substantiate their claims in a comprehensible way. By collecting court-admissible evidence, not only do the detectives of Kurtz Investigations Bremen help their clients to obtain their rights, but so do several hundred other reputable professional colleagues across Germany. The detective today is at once a celebrated pop star and figurehead (Sherlock Holmes), a cynically exploited marketing figure (various German TV productions) and a disreputable scandal-maker (untrustworthy amateur detectives). Above all, however, the modern private detective stands for decisive assistance in the enforcement of German law, for the support of victims and for the last straw for people in distressing life situations – Kurtz Detective Agency Bremen stands for that with its name: +49 421 3679 9066.