CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

At Surmount Investigations we offer one of the most comprehensive defence investigation services in the region.

We work with individuals who have been accused of a criminal offence but who maintain their innocence and feel that they have been let down ahead of their impending court date by an insufficient consolidation and presentation of the facts. We do this work either through instruction from the individual’s legal representative or in partnership with said representative.

Our work has ranged from supporting someone accused of a driving offence which they wished to contest through to helping someone who had been accused of a serious assault occasioning grievous bodily harm they denied ever committing, with quite a few variants in cases in between.

With this week’s blog we are going to take a closer and more detailed look at the benefits of employing a defence investigator to your case – with great haste! Read more about CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

With our second operational year now behind us, we wanted to do as we did in the first year and take a quick look back on what we’ve achieved as private investigators in Newcastle and throughout the whole of the North East.

Whilst working with the specific mandate of changing people’s perceptions of what a private investigator does and only taking on cases that meet our very high ethical standards, we set out the goals in our first year of 1) getting accepted as full/substantive members into a professional regulatory body within our field, 2) getting onto Page 1 of Google without any ‘tricks’ or ‘cheats’, 3) breaking further into the field of insurance fraud work and litigation support and 4) we wanted to survive the year. Read more about OLD GOALS SMASHED! … NEW GOALS FORMED!

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

Our client in Gateshead came to us at their wits end because of new neighbours next door that were of the “nightmare” variety instantly upon moving in – and only getting worse with each day.

It started with the neighbours allowing their four dogs out each day to urinate and defecate on our client’s property. When they were challenged about it and asked to stop it, the harassment started immediately: Loud music being put on blast when they went out so that our client had to suffer it, rubbish being purposefully thrown over the fence line in the back garden and property damage occurring during the night. Read more about HOW TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

WHY EXCELLENT LOCUS REPORTING IS IMPORTANT

WHY EXCELLENT LOCUS REPORTING IS IMPORTANT

A LOCUS report is a formal document made up of various other pieces of evidence that is designed to explain and identify the physical facts of how and where an accident or incident has occurred.

The overall document when broken down will contain things such as sketch plans, photographs, localised pertinent intelligence and the authoring agent’s written report. In our area of work within private investigation, they are most commonly used in legal cases such as insurance claims and defence cases pertaining to road traffic collisions and accidents resulting in injury. Read more about WHY EXCELLENT LOCUS REPORTING IS IMPORTANT

DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS: A PRE-INVESTIGATION NECESSITY

DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS: A PRE-INVESTIGATION NECESSITY

Surmount Investigations complete extensive due diligence checks before taking on any operation for any of our services so that we have the certainty and confidence that you are exactly who you say you are and that your request for us to complete an investigation and/or surveillance has a lawful basis or a legitimate purpose.

Where possible we will always endeavour to try and meet with a prospective client face-to-face as part of our free consultation service. If this is not possible we will ask for some photographic ID to be provided to us so we have confirmation of who we are dealing with along with why. Read more about DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS: A PRE-INVESTIGATION NECESSITY

HOW WE CATCH CHEATING PARTNERS

HOW WE CATCH CHEATING PARTNERS

Our Newcastle-based client had been with his partner for over fifteen years but came to us concerned about their behaviour.

She claimed to have received a promotion from work that meant she had to do longer hours now and she only ever seemed to use her work phone of an evening which was ‘fingerprint-locked’ and always vibrating causing her to get up and leave the room when it did. On top of that, their sex life had decreased and she seemed perpetually irritated by him. Read more about HOW WE CATCH CHEATING PARTNERS

‘ANOTHER’ DAY IN THE LIFE OF SURMOUNT INVESTIGATIONS

‘ANOTHER’ DAY IN THE LIFE OF SURMOUNT INVESTIGATIONS

Back in April this year we posted one of our most popular blog entries, which was a breakdown of a ‘day in the life’ of an investigator within the Surmount Investigations team.

We did that because we’re so often told how ‘exciting’ our job must be as PIs and asked what a typical day is like for a private investigator and in truth, no two days are often the same and we frequently break our days into different facets:

We have ‘Operational’ days, where we are out on the ground completing surveillance or investigative enquiries.

We have what we call ‘Paper’ days, where we are office based completing electronic enquiries or putting together the required paperwork for future process serves, due diligence on upcoming jobs and the like.

For this week’s blog we thought we’d dip back into the diary and show another day in the life of an investigator at Surmount: Read more about ‘ANOTHER’ DAY IN THE LIFE OF SURMOUNT INVESTIGATIONS

CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

As part of the extensive solicitor/litigation support services Surmount offer, we provide comprehensive criminal defence investigatory support to people through Newcastle, Tyne and Wear and the whole of the North East region who have been accused of a crime they believe themselves to be innocent of and need evidence gathered ahead of an impending court date.

Our investigatory support is completely bespoke to the needs of the client and their legal representative(s) and covers all criminal charges from minor offences through to murder trials. Read more about CRIMINAL DEFENCE INVESTIGATIONS

EFFECTIVE INTERVIEWING AND STATEMENT TAKING

EFFECTIVE INTERVIEWING AND STATEMENT TAKING

We work with a variety of clients throughout Newcastle and Tyne & Wear, professionally interviewing and recording evidentially sound statements under a multitude of circumstances that can range from employer/employee disputes and road traffic collisions through to litigation cases and victim of crime impact assessments.

Our background in policing and justice studies along with years of experience in interviewing and compiling statements for civil and criminal court puts us confidently in the position of knowing what is required to make the statement and the time it took to record worth its existence… Read more about EFFECTIVE INTERVIEWING AND STATEMENT TAKING