Cirtin Truths: Robert Cirtin Investigations LLC

Owner: Robert Cirtin

Founded: October 1991

Address: 610-A E. Battlefield Road, Box 169, Springfield, MO 65807

Phone: (417) 839-1252

Fax: (417) 890-8702

Web site: www.cirtininvestigations.com

E-mail: RCirtin@aol.com

Services: Full-service investigative and consulting firm

Employees: 5

Robert Cirtin is an accomplished author, academic and investigator. The juggling of those varied professional lives has a singular goal, however: improving the safety of individuals, businesses and nonprofits.

His story begins in police work, after which, he says, everything else just fell into place.

Triple threat

Cirtin’s criminal justice mind dates back to his teenage years, when he decided he was going to be a police officer. He worked full-time on the Springfield force 1984-87 and later became the chief investigator for Missouri’s division of professional registration.

As his experience grew, including a stint as director of investigations for the Missouri State Board of Accountancy, he discovered a talent for investigation and a passion for teaching. The two forces led him to form Robert Cirtin Investigations LLC in 1991, shortly after taking a teaching position with Evangel University.

State government contacts and career experience were parlayed into solid investigative jobs.

“Some of the state agencies that my office provided investigative services for began to call me,” Cirtin recalls. “They wanted me to continue working on a contract basis. It eventually became such a large volume of work that I had to start hiring people.”

Cirtin began seriously cultivating the business around 1993. The contract work grew into a business all its own as Cirtin continued to rise at Evangel, where he helped develop a full criminal justice curriculum. Now, he is the director of Evangel’s criminal justice department, and via Robert Cirtin Investigations conducts various investigations, including workers’ compensation and domestic cases, surveillance, computer forensic data recovery, polygraph examinations, drug testing, secret shopping and pre-employment screening.

Cirtin wouldn’t disclose revenues, but he recently added an employee in Kansas City and is looking for one in St. Louis. In 2005, he added a new business, Safe at Church LLC, focusing on church security and investigations.

“The interest and demand led me there,” Cirtin says. “I’ve attended church all my life and I still do. I attend Second Baptist Church here in Springfield. It’s a combination of my law enforcement experience, my investigative experience and my experience participating in church.”

On the lookout

Cirtin says anonymity is the biggest ally of the bad guys.

Many sexual predators will target churches that don’t do background searches. Cirtin wrote “Church Safety and Security, A Practical Guide” to correct that information deficit. Published in 2005 by CSS Publishing Co., the book provides a security roadmap to churches.

“I was seeing some articles out there – no books – that tell churches what they should be doing,” Cirtin says. “The problem was there were no articles or books telling churches how to do it – how to do background screening for paid and volunteer church workers, how to protect your church against theft and things like that.”

Chris Rey, owner of Aabott-Rey Detective Agency in St. Louis, commends Cirtin’s efforts in this area. Rey’s agency handles many kinds of investigations, and he sees background checks as something becoming more critical in the future for all types of business, not just churches.

“It always should have been,” Rey says. “That’s how you get a government security clearance.”

Judy Kempker, executive director of the Missouri Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Professional Land Surveyors, and Landscape Architects, is not surprised by Cirtin’s drive or success.

“I’ve known him over 16 years, since he was still director of investigations for the state board of accountancy,” Kempker says. “I’ve always been impressed with his work ethics and his quality of work.”

When the state receives a complaint about the work of a licensed professional in one of the areas Kempker oversees, state investigators are sent out to inspect the work. When there are too many cases for staffers, they rely on Cirtin and other freelancers. In the early days, Cirtin’s work with Kempker’s office amounted to hundreds of cases a year. It has shrunk to dozens of cases per year as people have learned the regulations and come to believe the state will investigate wrongdoing.

Kempker says Cirtin often goes above and beyond to satisfy his clients and would often solve problems before the state board realized it needed a solution. When the state board decided it wanted a licensed architect and land surveyor on investigations, Cirtin went out and found them.

“He has always been a very energetic, go-getter type of person,” Kempker says.