On Q Professional Investigations

Authorities are looking for an Orangeburg County Sheriff’s deputy after a woman was allegedly pistol-whipped and beaten during a domestic argument.

Dorchester County Sheriff’s deputies met a 23-year-old woman at a convenience store Wednesday night, according to an incident report.

She said her husband, 45-year-old Cpl. Kenneth Winningham, a deputy with Orangeburg County, had fired shots near her and assaulted her.

The woman said she was awakened by her husband around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday when he accused her of infidelity, the report said. He allegedly began beating her and later fired two rounds from a .45-caliber handgun.

Authorities with the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office went to Winningham’s Summerville residence and retrieved Winningham’s county-issued equipment.

DCSO spokesman Maj. John Garrison said as of late Thursday no warrants have been obtained against Winningham.

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Deland, Florida- Ever wonder if someone is spying on you with a hidden camera? Well we have some advice on how to protect your children and yourself.

33 year old Joshua Waguespack is accused of secretly recording two students getting undressed. Investigators say the Catholic school teacher, planted pen cameras in his storage closet, where kids would change their clothes, “Does it surprise you at all? No it’s easily accessible.” Jonathan Gulsby is manager of the U Spy Store in Orlando…He says there’s equipment you can use to protect your kids, as well as yourself from being secretly recorded. It ranges from $125 to $200, “We sell a good bit of counter surveillance equipment because people are concerned they’re being taped.”

The so called “Spy Finder” can detect small cameras, like pen cams, that often record on an SD card, “We do have devices that will detect lenses for hidden cams or anything that has a lens. You can shoot off this view finder and this shoots off some l-e-d-s and it reflects off a certain way. There will be a little red light you will be able o detect if there is a camera.”

And for wireless devices you can use this transmitter, “If its’ transmitting you have RF transmitters, radio frequency transmitters that you can use. When you get near the wireless camera, this device will spike and you’ll be able to detect if it’s setting off a radio frequency.”

Experts say it’s important to recognize what hidden cameras look like. They come in all different shapes and even very small sizes, “This little camcorder that can be planted in a wall. This little smiley face that has a little button. The pen cameras are all the same, the lens is mounted above the clip it’s made to be worn in the pocket.” Knowing what to look for is half the battle, “It doesn’t take much research to know what to look for.”

Experts say you should also be aware of how a brand name on items like clocks are spelled. If it’s incorrect, there’s most likely a hidden camera inside. Because it’s behind tint, a detector will not pick up the lens.

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It has become evermore common that employers check whether an applicant for a job has a criminal record.

The number of enquires made to the Criminal Records Registry in 2010 was 34 times higher than it had been in the middle of the 1990s.

This is the conclusion of a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, which analyses also the causes of this increase.

“One reason is that several new laws make checking the Registry compulsory for certain employers, such as schools.

But another reason is that employers who are not covered by these laws have started to request that an applicant present an extract from the Registry,” says Christel Backman.

Her thesis presents studies of how employers use criminal background checks when taking on new personnel.

A criminal background check has been compulsory when employing personnel within childcare and the school system since 2001, in order to exclude people who have been convicted of sexual crime or certain violent crimes.

Christel Backman’s thesis presents a historical analysis of the growth of the Register and the changes in legislation that have taken place.

The thesis includes also a study of interviews with employers who request extracts from the Register even though this is not required by law, and an analysis of the discussion in the media, from 1997 until today, concerning such criminal background checks.

The study shows that employers who require that applicants present an extract from the Register despite this not being founded in law do so because the employees deal with theft-attractive goods, that it will give a competitive advantage, or that they have customers who require it.

“It is easy to understand individual employers who believe that they must do everything possible to prevent the employees committing crime”, says Christel Backman. “But we should be more critical to this development from a societal perspective.”

Debate in the media during the past ten years has swung from criticism of the use of criminal background checks to criticism of the fact that they are not used more frequently. The focus previously was on rehabilitation of a convicted person. Today, it has become preventing crime by excluding convicted persons. Christel Backman believes that there is a risk that increased use of criminal background checks will lead to convicted people being excluded during recruitment, and thus finding it more difficult to become reintegrated in society. This is occurring at the same time that research shows that having somewhere to live and having a job are the most important factors in preventing a convicted person reoffending.

Christel Backman interprets the fact that employers who are not covered by the legal requirement to request an extract from the Criminal Records Registry do so as a sign that measures that previously would have been considered a violation of privacy are now being more readily accepted.

“I call this ‘function creep’,” says Christel Backman, and continues: “It’s a common effect in various forms of surveillance. We can see the same thing happening in CCTV monitoring and in the use of DNA registers. We become accustomed to measures that violate our privacy, and start to ask why they are not more widely used. Finally, we demand that such measures be introduced, and ignore the negative consequences that this has.”

Background: Just over 184,000 compulsory criminal background checks of job applicants were carried out in 2010. More than 160,000 people requested an extract from the Registry in the same year. Most of these were people who had applied for a job with an employer who required such an extract.

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