Expert: Dick Rogers - 11/8/2008

Question
Hi! I am working on a story about a Homicide Detective and need to know if Detectives need to work with partners (ie: assigned to each other), or if they can work on their own, albeit with the help of colleagues in the department. Thank you for your time.

Answer
Donna, I can only relate to my own experience...wherein our department utilized partner teams in homicide.  Specifically, we had five teams with about ten two-man teams, roughly eighty detectives.  Each 20 man team was usually "in the barrel" for any homicide that came into the bureau.  Getting down to the two-man teams, my partner and I were ideally matched.  I referred to him as the "macro' guy and I was the "micro" guy.  He would be sniffing around the crime scene in a broad sense and I would be spending a lot of time with the body or scoping specific evidence.  It worked beautifully.  If you are getting into a story, the idea of two-man detective teams would be ideal, I think.  You could get into eccentricities of each, and how they played into their being good detectives...complete with minor annoyances and similar things. Try to remember in building your characters that a humorous cynic in depicting a cop always seems to work...something along the lines of the Jerry Orhbach character in Law and Order.  I wish you well in your writing.