The creator of a new Internet-based repository aims to reunite American Indians with missing and unidentified loved ones.

Missing from the Circle is being offered as a public service by Lamar Associates, a national firm that specializes in consulting for law enforcement and security in Indian Country.

President Walter Lamar said the hope is that through Missing from the Circle people will be able to complete their spiritual journey by reconnecting families.

“There has been quite a bit of interest and kind of a heartbreaking response from Indian Country,” Lamar said. “What it tells us is there are a significant number of missing Native Americans that are not reported through official channels and their families don’t have any mechanism to help locate their loved ones.”

They are questions Cathy Gardner has asked herself constantly since her stepdaughter disappeared two years ago: Could she be one of the 57 bodies yet to be identified in the state of Maryland? Is it possible she is one of thousands of unidentified bodies in morgues throughout the country?

Next week, the family of Tracey Gardner will finally get a chance to see if their DNA matches that of a Jane Doe currently logged into the National Crime Information Center’s DNA database. And dozens of other families will have the same opportunity.

State’s aid to program unchanged for four years, while cases rise sharply.

A year ago, Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies rescued a 77-year-old woman in the predawn hours from her home, where she had been beaten and held hostage.

After officers arrested her son and crime scene investigators collected evidence, county social worker David Van Brunt got to work: He helped the victim file an emergency restraining order, took more pictures once welts became more apparent on her chest and left arm, and stood by her side when she needed someone to fight for her.

“When David showed up, he was so knowledgable and so confident and so sure of himself, it gave her a comfort that I couldn’t give her,” said a relative, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the son. “He represented an agency that protected the elderly. They had the authority to do something.”

More than 60 men and women have been swept up in a five-county dragnet across the Central Valley on insurance fraud and related charges.

“Today’s arrests have dealt a death blow to these elaborately organized schemes. By working together, we’ve crippled their ability to continue their concerted rip-off of the system,” says California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

The arrests were made in Kern, Kings, Tulare, Fresno and Merced counties.

Forensic Investigation Services to be performed in Iraq

The U.S. Army RDECOM Acquisition Center intends to complete a requirement for forensic investigation services to be performed in Iraq. These commercial type services will be conducted under FAR 12. The requirement will be for 2 latent print examiners and 2 firearms/toolmark examiners. Evaluation criteria will include technical capability; personnel credentials, experience, and qualifications; past performance; and price. Due to the time-sensitivity of this requirement, the quotation response time will be reduced. The solicitation will be posted to the Army Single Face to Industry website. Interested offerors are encouraged to check the system frequently so quotations can be built as soon as the solicitation is released.

The scheduled due date for this bid is June 27, 2007

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RenewData, a start-up in Austin, Texas, launched a new service last week aimed at helping companies migrate their historical e-mail systems to new systems.

The company, which does e-discovery of e-mails and other unstructured data for compliance and litigation purposes, is rolling out its Data Migration Services.

Bail News Roundup - June 22, 2007

The AboutBail.com staff this week was reading about a bail enforcement professional committed to tracking down a dangerous felon. We were reading of a bail bondsman who had bad news to deliver and of changes (and possible changes) to legislation. If you are sick of the re-runs already, just check out our pick of the news this week:

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Bail News Roundup - June 15, 2007

This week, the AboutBail.com staff was reading about a suspicious fire that affected a bondsman and the tribulations of a self-described bounty hunter who was only recently released from Afghanistan. Add to that delays at the Fresno Jail and you have a week that challenged the profession. The one light of hope comes from proposed legislation that might restore more power to bail agents. Our top picks for this week’s news stories are:

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An alert Manhattan Housing Court judge saved hundreds of public housing tenants from eviction this winter by blowing the whistle on a Bronx woman who never gave tenants formal notice of the legal proceedings against them.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau disclosed the judge’s intervention yesterday when he announced that process server Margarita Nunez, 51, has pleaded guilty to filing false documents and faces five years’ probation.

It’s an unusual job that requires a nun’s habit one day, white stockings and nurse’s cap the next, or a delivery agent’s brown shirt and shorts. But, for Sandra Parsons, it’s all in a day’s work.

For 25 years, no one has doubted Parsons as she assumes the roles of ordinary people to obtain information as a private detective.

“The key to fooling others is to believe it yourself,” Parsons said. “I have crawled under barbed wire, and done just about anything to finish a case.”
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• Group for Private Investigators
• Group for Process Servers