As we near the one year mark of remote working and the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, CI’s criminal team has been reflecting on the landscape of criminal research over the last 12 months. At the start of the pandemic, courts slowly started to close down, and for a lot of us, it felt like there was no end in sight. No one knew when they were going to reopen or if and when we would hear back from a clerk or a judge. This definitely threw a wrench in our criminal investigations but it did not stop us completely! Luckily with our persistence and determination our criminal team kept on researching and did our very best to continue like the world was in a normal state.

However, there was still only so much we could do during these difficult times. We kept making an effort to try and get in touch with any court we needed information from. Whether we were leaving voicemails, sending faxes, or sending out emails, we tried any form of communication we could! We made sure we were reaching out to them even if they were closed so we could be ready when they opened again. It was a long couple of months until courts started to respond to us and even then, a majority of courts were working part time with 30% staff.

Thankfully, around the middle of the summer, courts started to very slowly reopen. Some of the time, it was just a clerk in the court once a week or judges only answering emails, but we finally started to hear back from courts! It was very exciting for our criminal team! We are so proud of our criminal investigators and their ability to adapt and adjust alongside with the courts and work together to get it done. As a team, we kept up with court hours and instructions along with good communication and maintaining good relationships with courts to get the information we needed. We continue to find new and quicker ways to receive the needed information while still doing thorough and accurate research. We have only gotten more innovative as the months have gone by!

Commercial Investigations was also able to utilize our custom search for New York State criminal records, Cursory Indicator New York (CI NY), during Covid-19 and in the wake of numerous court closures and delays in our home state. CI NY has always been a hugely beneficial inquiry for New York State criminal records but this pandemic really solidified just how necessary of an inquiry it is. With the help of CI NY, our fabulous team of investigators, and our willingness to adapt and be innovative, we were able to keep our operations running smoothly! So smoothly that most of our clients didn’t even realize we were working remote for the majority of the year! Obviously we are not over this pandemic yet but we continue to thrive and persevere through any changes that come our way. However, we are very much looking forward to a post pandemic world!