INTELLIGENCE-LED POLICING

Intelligence-led policing

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INTELLIGENCE-LED POLICING

Jose Gomez

University of San Diego

Community Assessment

August 8, 2016

Professor Blondi

Law enforcement intelligence is not a new concept. In fact, law enforcement intelligence was a result of military and national security which can be dated back to ancient times. More recently, intelligence-led policing became important to understand and utilized. Intelligence-led policing (ILP) originated in Great Britain by Kent Constabulary. It developed in response to severe increases in property crimes. The perception was that a small number of criminals were responsible for a large percentage of crimes. They believed that police officer would have a better effect on crime by focusing on the most rampant offenses occurring in their jurisdictions. In recent years, ILP has emerged as a strategic, future-oriented and targeted approach to crime control that focuses on the identification, analysis, and management of persisting and developing problems.

The Oceanside Police Department (OPD) has adapted the use of intelligence-led policing. OPD currently utilizes two data collection and analysis programs, the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS) and the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). Along with the assistance of a Crime and Intelligence Analyst Unit and the two programs, OPD is able to identify, analyze, and manage emerging problems in the community. Recently, the City of Oceanside has experienced a rise in property crimes which makes crime rates increased. The increase in crime rates is problematic for law enforcement leaders and politicians as they have to explain to the community as to why there is an upsurge in crime.

In order to grasp a better handle on rising crime around the city, OPD has a full-time in-house Crime and Intelligence Analyst Unit that receives raw data analyzes it and shares the intelligence in-house as well as with other surrounding agencies in an effort to target approach to crime control. The Crime and Intelligence Analyst Unit is responsible for publishing crime trends, officer safety bulleting’s and sharing information from other neighboring agencies. We often get a weekly crime trend which identify the crime trend and the location. It’s even broken down to comparisons from previous month/year to even the days and times of the week in which the crimes are being committed. Finally, Crime and Intelligence Analyst unit is able to produce a list of possible persons of interest base on the location, raw information received, and prior crime spree. Below is an example of last week’s weekly crime trend and also crime stats from the current year as a comparison from the previous year statistics.

OPD also utilizes the intelligence-led policing data available from ARJIS to not only identify problem locations but also to develop a strategic plan to combat the issues both short and long term. According to the ARJIS website, ARJIS was created as a Joint Power Agency to share information among justice agencies throughout San Diego and Imperial Counties. ARJIS is responsible for major safety initiatives, including wireless access to photos, warrants, and other data in the field, crime and sex offender mapping, crime analysis tools evaluation, and an enterprise system of applications that help users solve the crime and identify offenders. Below is a chart from ARJIS Crime Statistics for the months of April 2016 to June 2016. In those three months alone we can see that the total property crime was 1001 incidents. Compare to the previous year in the same three months the total property crime was 1109. The central tendency for the total property crime for the months of April to June 2016 is as follow: The total sum is 361, 321, and 319 equals 1001/3 equals to the mean of 333.66 and the median is at 321 cases. This illustrates in comparison of the mean to be slightly higher than the median.

SANDAG has the ability to analyze raw data and produce reports on crime trends. The analyzed data or intelligence is then made available for law enforcement agencies. SANDAG relies upon a cooperative agreement with each local law enforcement agency. The data is collected by SANDAG from each agency on a monthly basis. In the year 2013-2014 SANDAG analysis was that property crimes decreased fairly consistent across the jurisdictions across San Diego County. However, Oceanside was relatively stable or had a decrease in at least one category. The decrease was larceny which measures according to the report petty and grand theft.

Intelligence-led policing is a crime fighting philosophy and is a new paradigm in law enforcement. Intelligence-led policing is a more hierarchical and emphasizes from the top down approach to law enforcement. In other words, criminal intelligence runs up to decision makers at the executive level, who set priorities for enforcement and prevention, then passes back to the lower levels of the organization for operational tasking. A concern about the utilization of the intelligence-led policing for all of us in law enforcement is the abuse and misuse of criminal intelligence files. This was precedent in the 1950’s and 1960’s which resulted in government legislation 28 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 23. OPD is aware of privacy and abuse/misuse of information that has been added to our policy and procedures which a violation can result in criminal charges. In order to avoid the misuse of intelligence-led policing, I would implement a standardized training for all law enforcement in order for officers to avoid miss using the available intelligence as well as to promote intelligence sharing among agencies.

A new paradigm shift in law enforcement is intelligence-led policing. As law enforcement leaders it is important to be able to gather raw information, being able to properly analyze the information and produce valid intelligence is key in curbing crime and apprehending criminals. The more sharing of intelligence we do with our neighboring agencies the more effective we will be.

References:

http://www.arjis.org/SitePages/WhatIsARJIS.aspx

http://www.sandag.org/uploads/publicationid/publicationid_2020_20533.pdf

http://crimestats.arjis.org/Default.aspx

http://www.patc.com/weeklyarticles/intelligence_policing.shtml

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/210681.pdf