Speaker for September 15 - Erin Gill

Posted by Deborah Perkins

Our speaker today was Erin Gill. Erin spoke about the challenges of being a private invstigator.

Erin Gill, Floyd Gill’s wife, gave an interesting presentation about her experience as a private investigator. Erin spent eight years as a Ventura County Probation Officer before starting her own investigative firm, Gill Investigative Services. In addition to her investigative work, she also teaches college level criminal justice classes. In order to offer services as a private investigator in California, you must be licensed by the state. Before you may apply for a license, you need to have at least 6,000 hours of law enforcement experience. Then, you must pass a background investigation and an extremely difficult 150 question exam. Once licensed, you have access to DMV records and other databases that are not available to the public.Although the common perception of a private investigator is that of a person covertly following a spouse accused of cheating, Erin assured us that she does not do this. Erin focuses more on gathering facts and preparing witnesses. She will go to crime scenes and other locations to take measurements and look for new evidence. Her findings are then turned over to the attorney who hired her. Erin’s goal is to find the truth.Erin stated that in her role as private investigator she no longer has any affiliation with law enforcement. As such, she makes it very clear to everyone she interviews that she is working for the defense. Since the attorney-client privilege does not extend to her work, there is no confidentiality between her and those people that she interviews. As such, she is often called as a witness to testify about the interviews that she conducted and the evidence that she collected. Erin occasionally prepares Sentencing Mitigation Reports. This is where she lays out the facts and prepares an argument for why a person should get some type of alternative sentence, such as probation instead of prison. Erin believes that there are only a few cases in which this is warranted and therefore is very selective in determining when to prepare such a report. Erin created a new program that assists for-profit colleges in keeping their accreditations. The colleges have certain standards that they need to meet in the admissions process. Erin and her staff will send people through the entire admissions process to determine where problems exist. She reports that this has been highly successful.

Erin also conducts pre-employment background checks, which she says have been on the rise. In her experience, many employers do conduct credit checks.

Erin stated that it is amazing the amount of information that is available on the internet. She recommends being very careful about what information you post on Facebook and other sites as this can always be brought up in the future.

Thank you Erin for sharing your experience as a private investigator.

Deborah A. Perkins