Quote Originally Posted by nightracer
They don't have a beareau of investigation for the state of ohio where I'm from they just have FBI branches. Soooooooooooooooo..... Why must there be a need for GBI? Doesn't make sense.. I just found out about them when my neighbor walked up to her apt, w/ her gun and gbi shirt. Wondered wtf it was and she told me what it stood for............hmmm.. :confused:
Nearly every state has a Bureau of Investigation. In Georgia from 1733 to 1937 law enforcement was the resposibility of local governments. In 1937 the Department of Public Safety was established and made into two divisions...Georgia State Patrol and a "plainclothes" division originally known as the "Division of Criminal Identification, Detection, Prevention, and Investigation". In 1940 it's name was changed to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

In short it's a white collar department, a little more technical then the average police or sheriff's department...forensic science, etc. and they are responsible for maintaining all the criminal records.

Since 1974 GBI has been split into 3 divisions itself...the Investigative Division, the Division of Forensic Sciences (state crime lab) and the Georgia Crime Information Center. And during that year GBI's name was changed to the Division of Investigation but was changed back to GBI the following year.

http://www.state.ga.us/gbi/history.html