Kim Rossmo

He joined the Vancouver Police Department as a civilian employee in 1978 and became a sworn officer in 1980. In 1987 he received a master's degree in criminology from Simon Fraser University and in 1995 became the first police officer in Canada to obtain a doctorate in criminology.^[2] His dissertation research resulted in a new criminal investigative methodology called geographic profiling, based on Rossmo's formula. This technology was integrated into a specialized crime analysis software product called Rigel. The Rigel product is developed by the software company Environmental Criminology Research Inc. (ECRI), which Rossmo co-founded.^[3]

In 1995, he was promoted to detective inspector and founded a geographic profiling section within the Vancouver Police Department.^[4] In 1998, his analysis of cases of missing sex trade workers determined that a serial killer was at work, a conclusion ultimately vindicated by the arrest and conviction of Robert Pickton in 2002. A retired Vancouver police staff sergeant has claimed that animosity toward Rossmo delayed the arrest of Pickton, leaving him free to carry out additional murders.^[5] His analytic results were not accepted at the time and after a dispute with senior members of the department he left in 2001. His unsuccessful lawsuit against the Vancouver Police Board for wrongful dismissal exposed considerable apparent dysfunction within that department.^[2]

Washington DC and Texas

After serving as director of research at the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2003,^[6] he moved to Texas State University where he currently holds the Endowed Chair in Criminology and is director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation.^[7] Since then, he has applied techniques of geographic profiling to counterterrorism, animal foraging,^[8] biological invasions,^[9][10] and epidemiology. He has also researched and published on the subject of criminal investigative failures. He has written three books.