NetWatch assist police investigation

Since 2014 NetWatch have assisted the police with multiple investigations, the first of these was a serious racial assault that occurred at a prominent pub chain. The assault resulted in one of the victims sustaining a serious hand injury and the other sustaining minor cuts and bruises.

In the days following the incident the police were struggling to locate witnesses or the suspects and had issued press releases via the local news.

NetWatch’s experienced intelligence analysts conducted extensive open source investigation and located numerous social media posts related to the incident made by parties involved as well as potential key witnesses. Some of these posts contained references to items of furniture that had either been used as weapons or damaged in the incident, as well as posts by the attackers bragging about what they had done.

In collating and examining the identified social media intelligence NetWatch were able to produce a detailed report for the investigating officers that contained useful information to make further enquiries with the potential suspects and witnesses. Due the intelligence identified in our report, NetWatch were instructed by the police to produce an evidence package containing all posts pertaining to the incident, which could be used as crucial evidence and presented to the suspects.

Since 2014 NetWatch has provided expert open source investigation assistance to UK forces on a number of cases, opening numerous further lines of enquiry.