Even the clerical staff at least got nifty acronyms—PAAs, short for police administrative aides. And so, unsurprisingly, the cops who did the increasingly important work of analyzing computers for the NYPD weren’t merely detectives: they were CIS detectives. Typically, a victim’s computer would have been inspected at the precinct by one of the department’s “computer associates”—civilians who tended toward the long-haired, lanky, Dungeons & Dragons techno-nerd variety, more comic-con than Columbo. But when the daughter of Bill Whitmire was involved, Rogan had sent the laptop directly to headquarters to be examined by a CIS detective. Because Julia was dead, they did not need a court’s permission to search every byte of the computer’s data. They could read her documents, follow her Internet surfing trail, and pore over her e-mail history. With her death, Julia had lost any right to privacy. Today’s CIS detective introduced himself as Peter Pettinato.
