Investigative Learning Going Forward
Many topics relative to investigative practices have not been covered as part of the core knowledge
requirements for a new investigator. These topics include:
1. Major Case Management
2. Informant and confidential source management
3. Undercover investigations
4. Specialized team investigations
While we cannot consider these topics in any depth, it will important for the new investigator to at least
know about them with respect to more advanced practices of criminal investigation.
Topic 1: Major Case Management
A contemporary practice for the handling of major criminal investigations involving multiple
jurisdictions, multiple investigative agencies, and often serial criminal events, Major Case Management
is a system designed to achieve order, cooperation, and information sharing between police agencies.
In Canada, creating and adopting the practices of Major Case Management was driven by the
1995/1996 report and Commission of Inquiry recommendations of Justice Archie Campbell examining
the various police agency investigations into the activities of Paul Bernardo, who was a serial rapist
and murderer whose activities between 1987 and 1992 included the rape or sexual assault of at least
eight women in the areas of Scarborough, Peel, and St Catharines, Ontario, and the murder of three
women in St. Catharines and Burlington, Ontario (Campbell, 1996). To quote directly from the
Campbell’s report:
The Bernardo case, like every similar investigation, had its share of human error. But this is not a
story of human error or lack of dedication or investigative skill. It is a story of systemic failure. It is
easy, knowing now that Bernardo was the rapist and the killer, to ask why he was not identified
earlier for what he was. But the same questions and the same problems have arisen in so many other
similar tragedies in other countries.
Virtually every interjurisdictional serial killer case including Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Rapist) and
Black (the cross-border child killer) in England, Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer in the United
States and Clifford Olsen in Canada, demonstrate the same problems arise and the same questions.
And always the answer turns out to be the same – systemic failure. Always the problems turn out to
be the same, the mistakes the same, and the systemic failures the same.
What is needed is a system of case management for major interjurisdictional serial predator
investigations. As system that corrects the defects demonstrated by this and so many similar cases.
A case management system is based on co-operation, rather than rivalry, among law enforcement
agencies. A case management system is needed that depends on specialized training, early
recognition of linked offences, co-ordination of interdisciplinary and forensic resources, and some
simple mechanisms to ensure unified management, accountability and co-ordination when serial
predators cross police borders. (Campbell, 1996)/ From the recommendations of the Campbell
Report, the Canadian Police College in Ottawa, Ontario took a leadership role in working with police
agencies and investigators from across Canada to develop a major case management system and
training that would address the concerns raised by the Campbell report. The major case management
system allows for the creation of case specific major case management teams when it is determined
that a serious criminal investigation crosses jurisdictional boundaries. In this system, the major case
management team operates as an autonomous case specific unit, led by a command group comprised
of a team commander, a primary investigator, and a file coordinator. In this structure, the team is
staffed with experienced investigative personnel from each of the partner agencies, and no single
partner agency has control over the conduct of the investigation.
Partner agencies receive reports on the investigative progress and provide their collective input to the
team through contact with only the team commander. The major case management team handles the
specific case, receiving all evidence and incoming information through the file coordinator as TIPS and
each TIP is assigned by the primary investigator for follow up by the investigators on the team. The
team follows a strict regime of daily information sharing through a process of daily briefings, and all
team members are encouraged to share their investigative progress and to assist in the creation and
development of investigative strategies. New or inexperienced investigators are not assigned to duties
as part of a Major Case Management team. Being selected to participate as an investigator on one of
these team means that your investigative skills have reached the point where you can be counted on to
perform at a very high level.
Topic 2: Informant and Confidential Source Management
Informants and confidential sources often provide police investigators with information to solve a
single crime or to investigate a criminal organization. In court cases, such as R vs Basi (2009), the
courts have recognized that confidential informants are a critical tool for effective police work. Given
this, the court provides privilege for the police and Crown to not reveal the identity of a source in court,
particularly in cases where that privilege has been asked for by the source and agreed to by the police
as a condition of providing information (Dostal, 2012).
Even with the condition of anonymity, experienced source handlers know that if their informant
participates in the criminal event as an agent of the police, the source can be classified by the courts as
an “agent provocateur”, and may not claim the privilege of anonymity. These complexities of
confidentiality make source and informant management a very sensitive matter. Failure to manage the
informant or their information properly can result in the identity of the person being revealed with the
risk of deadly consequences or having to put the informant into a witness protection program.
The field of informant management and protection requires trust building and communication skills
that will be effective with persons who are part of the criminal community. This is sometimes achieved
by using discretion, not pursuing the more minor criminal activities of an informant, or even trading
away certain criminal charges against the informant in exchange for specific information on a more
serious crime. These strategies can be very delicate, and often require the collaboration with Crown
Prosecutors in cases where the administration of justice may be compromised by an investigator acting
independently.
A new investigator would not become involved in these higher level informant management cases, but
could start building the framework and network of street-level contacts to learn the skills of informant
management. The first stages of building the skill set to manage informants and confidential sources
starts with learning to have non-judgemental conversations with members of the criminal community.
When persons in the criminal community
157 • INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
see a police investigator as fair, friendly, and approachable, this opens the door for the investigator to
approach those contacts for specific inquiries when an occasion presents itself.
Topic 3: Undercover Investigations
An undercover investigation is the practice of a police officer posing as someone other than a police
officer for the purpose of collecting evidence of criminal activity that would otherwise be difficult to
acquire. The possible personas of the undercover investigator are almost limitless and can range from
posing as a person seeking to purchase drugs from local traffickers to impersonating a vulnerable
elderly citizen in a park to capture a purse snatcher preying on the elderly. There are also deep
undercover strategies that may include establishing a longer term identity with the purpose of
infiltrating a criminal organization or a dissident political group to gain internal intelligence of
organizational activities, culture, and membership.
Police investigators often find undercover strategies successful because criminal activity can be
witnessed firsthand, and admissions of guilt made to undercover operators by criminals can be
admitted to court without the need of the usual voir dire to test for admissibility. When conducting
undercover operations, investigators must be careful to ensure that their presence and communication
with the suspect is not the catalyst that causes that person to initiate a crime or carry through with a
crime they would not otherwise have done. If these dynamics of initiating the crime occur, a defence of
entrapment can sometimes be made on behalf of the accused person. New investigators may be given
the opportunity to participate in minor undercover roles fairly early in their careers, and these can be
valuable learning experiences.
Topic 4: Specialized Team Investigations
The urbanization of communities and the evolution of fields of specialized policing have created new
opportunities for officers. Where it was once the case that a police officer was expected to be a
generalist capable of working across a wide range of policing fields, the level of expertise now
expected in many fields is such that specialized investigative teams have become the norm. Specialized
investigative duties now include:
• Forensic Identification Section
• Traffic Analyst and Accident Reconstruction Units
• Criminal intelligence and Crime Analysis
• Criminal and Geographic Crime Profiling
• Polygraph section and specialized interview teams
• Computer Crime Analysts and Data Recovery
• Organized Crime Sections
• Gang Crime Unit
• Integrated Homicide Investigation Teams
• Dedicated Surveillance Units
• Community Policing Teams
CHAPTER 11: SUMMARY
•
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For a new investigator, each of these specialities offers an area and a direction where they may decide
to direct their career, and it is not uncommon for a police officer to move through several specialized
sections over the course of their policing career. What each of these specialized teams does have in
common is that investigators on these teams have all achieved the level of basic investigative task skills
and thinking skills required to make them a valuable asset to their team and their organization.
As new investigators continue to develop their investigative knowledge applying the task skills and
thinking skills presented in this book, it is important to remember that practice and experience are
critical components of the ongoing investigative learning. Many police organizations have carefully
developed field training programs where new recruits are challenged to engage and demonstrate
investigative skills within a set schedule of tasks to complete the compulsory training.
Once this set schedule is completed, it is then incumbent upon the new investigator to become a more
self-directed learner. In most policing organizations the path to ongoing investigative duties and the
associated experience and skills development that come with those duties, is only available to those
who actively seek that experience.
The secret to continued development as an investigator is a simple one; become a self-directed learner
and seek out investigative experience and learning at any and all levels available. These work
experiences may seem mundane and tedious at times, but every witness interviewed, every search
completed, each piece of evidence properly collected and marked, every report written, and every
experience testifying in court, is part of the ongoing experience and learning.
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