Interview with Jim Gordon, West Mercia Police

Forensic Focus: Jim, can you tell us something about your background?

Jim Gordon: I left school in Dundee, Scotland when I was 17 years old and joined the Royal Air Force Police. I served in the RAF Police for just over 15 years, the majority of which was spent in the Special Investigation Service. Like most service personnel I served all over the place including three years in Cyprus, also visiting Belize in Central America, the Falkland Islands and finishing off with three years at the Joint Headquarters at Rheindahlen near Monchengladbach in Germany.

On leaving the RAF I joined Merseyside Police where I served in Liverpool city centre. I ended up on a Pro Active vehicle crime unit. After three great years I transferred to West Mercia Police where I was initially stationed at Kidderminster to the South West of Birmingham.

West Mercia is the fourth largest geographic police area in England and Wales. It covers the Welsh border counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. While West Mercia is predominantly rural, it also contains some densely populated urban areas and many market towns. As you can imagine it was quite a culture shock compared to Liverpool City centre.

After a short period in uniform I spent a number of years on the Pro Active CID, mainly employed in drug investigations at a local level, before successfully applying to become a Detective in the Criminal Investigation Department. In 2001 I successfully applied to join the Hi Tech Crime Unit. As they say the rest is history.

Forensic Focus: Why did you decide to work in the field of computer crime investigation?

Jim Gordon: I was always interested in computers from my days of being the proud owner of a ZX Spectrum and later when I seriously upgraded to an Olivetti 486. Whilst in the CID at Kidderminster I successfully completed a project management course and later during 2000 had the opportunity of going on an attachment to help the Force introduce the National Intelligence Model. Whilst part of the project team I first came into contact with the Hi Tech Crime Unit that at that time consisted of one member of staff. During 2001 the Hi Tech Crime Unit expanded and I successfully applied for one of the roles within the unit. As you can see from my background I’ve always worked in an investigatory role which is something that I enjoy and so computer forensics allows me to continue this, learn new things everyday and support the investigation teams...

Read more at http://www.forensicfocus.com/jim-gordon-interview-150909

Forensic Focus Graduate Recruitment

I'm delighted to announce the introduction of the Forensic Focus Graduate Recruitment program. Headed by respected computer forensics recruitment specialist David Sullivan and supported by technical experts in the fields of both computer and mobile forensics, this program aims to match graduates with suitable employers throughout the US, Canada and the UK.

Further details can be found at http://www.forensicfocus.com/graduates. Enquiries and resumes/CVs may be sent to graduates@forensicfocus.com

Helix 3 Enterprise review

A review of Helix 3 Enterprise written by Jonathan Krause of Forensic Control can be read here with discussion here.

"Helix 3 Enterprise (H3E) is e-fense’s flagship investigation suite pitched at a similar level as EnCase Enterprise or Access Data Enterprise. It’s aimed at organisations which need to be able to carry out incident response, forensics and e-discovery functions over networks. H3E facilitates centralised incident response, imaging of drives and volatile data and also enables scans and searches of a user’s internet history and documents on any computer which has had the H3E Agent pre-installed on it..."

Read more...