Best Practices

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes the best practices gleaned from cases and consultations across the country. The most important practice would be to catalog everything, including the decisions investigators make, and rely on the records and the good faith efforts of field detectives and the strategies pursued. Most, if not all, investigations usually produce the name of the suspect within the first 30 to 45 days. It is often what happens inside the management procedures and information filing systems of the task force that obfuscates what the investigators learn from their field work. Task forces can work if the task force learns how to simplify its procedures, stay out of its own way, and consistently review all the records relating to each of the victims, the murder sites, the contact sites, and any other relevant sites associated with the cases. The suspect's name is already there. All the task force has to do is find him or her.