How Are People Searched for When They’re Wanted by the Police?

1. After the active search ends, tracking markers are set up in police databases based on the person’s identifying information. Recognizing someone by photo becomes nearly impossible after some time. Border guards and facial recognition officers only compare the photo to the person’s face. Remembering hundreds of thousands of faces in the wanted list is simply not possible.
   Markers include relatives (family ties, where relatives live), friends, and places the suspect used to visit (if they’ve been identified). By analyzing your past phone calls over the last 2-3 months, your contacts can be identified and checked.
2. The main way people are found is through tips from citizens who report their suspicions to the police about wanted individuals.
3. If another crime is committed, someone who wasn’t caught for the first crime may slip up during the second or later offenses. This can unravel the whole chain.
4. Searching by IP address is poorly handled by the police (the situation with the FSB and cybercrime units is unclear). Pages on LiveJournal, VKontakte, and other sites are rarely checked through databases. However, unfortunately, this is changing, and law enforcement is increasingly using IP address tracking.
5. Searches (and monitoring) are conducted, though not very effectively, through programs like “Sirena” (air travel), “Express-2” (rail transport), and “Rozysk-Magistral.”
6. A new method for finding witnesses to a murder is to request all phone billing data for plus or minus 10 minutes around the crime. This helps identify everyone who was near or at the crime scene, who are then questioned as possible witnesses. They also request billing data for the cell tower where the crime happened and check if the wanted person’s phone was there. Entire logical chains are built to reconstruct the suspect’s movements if they had a phone with them.
7. Tricks. The most common is to summon someone to the police for a “conversation,” supposedly as a witness. This is a standard investigator’s trick. That’s why you shouldn’t even go to the first interrogation or, as police investigators like to joke, a “chat.”
8. First of all, get rid of all mobile phones and SIM cards registered in your name. Every phone has an IMEI number, which can be easily tracked by mobile networks. Your location can be pinpointed to within 2-3 meters. From now on, you need a NEW phone and a SIM card not registered to you. Of course, you shouldn’t call relatives. Use anonymizers and wireless networks to access websites (like social networks).
9. Old friends, even the most trusted, may tell investigators where you live or that they’ve been in contact with you at the first question. If you’re wanted, you should NEVER tell anyone anything, not even your closest friends.
10. Usually, the search is most intense during the first month. A search case is opened, and the criminal case is suspended. Police set up stakeouts at your home and at the homes of close relatives. After a month, the investigation’s activity drops sharply, and after a year, your search case will likely be gathering dust on a shelf next to the criminal case.
11. It’s easier to disappear in a big city than in a village. In a village, the local police officer and residents know everyone by sight, so a new person stands out.
12. Experienced people say there are secret partisan trails in the remote Bryansk forests (dating back to wartime), which local guides use to help fugitives cross into Ukraine. A backpack, soft shoes to avoid blisters (like sneakers), water, and food – and off you go. Whether this is true, I don’t know. I’ve never used the services of such guides myself.
13. Changing your appearance. In practice, changing your hairstyle and hair color is usually enough.