Intelligence Led Policing

Intelligence led policing has not been a concept widely discussed within the law enforcement community, until recently. Typically, when one thinks of intelligence it is usually geared toward the federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the military components which make up the Department of Defense (DoD). In the last 20 years there has been a push toward intelligence focused policing within the law enforcement community via the concept of intelligence led policing. While the notion is fairly new to the law enforcement, it is one which helps with methods of policing, resource allocation, and ultimately crime prevention. Intelligence led policing is not an overhaul strategy to change

With the ability of the public to utilize telephones and call for help, the response time had given law enforcement officials the ability to arrive sometimes within minutes of the crime. This practice has led the law enforcement community into a role of being crime responders instead of crime preventers. With the events of the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks and the rise of organized criminal activity, the focus of the law enforcement community has shifted to a more active prevention role of both terrorism and criminal activity within the United States and worldwide. The practice of intelligence led policing originated in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1980’s to 1990’s. It came into fruition due to the large and more often occurrences of criminal activity within the UK. “Intelligence-led policing is a policing business model that incorporates data analysis and criminal intelligence into a strategy that coordinates strategic risk management of threats with a focus on serious, recidivist offenders. It originated in the UK but has been increasingly adopted around the world” (Ratcliffe, J. 2014). Basically, the model focuses on intelligence regarding past crimes to be able to anticipate locations and offenders of future crimes. This practice then helps law enforcement officials to allocate personnel and resources to these areas to increase their presence and possibly to deter

Such partners include “federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, fusion center partnership, public sector, private sector, and their respective communities” (BJA, 2009). Maintaining such relationships can be a difficult task because of jurisdictional attitudes amongst the different agencies, however such practices should be limited. Different agencies can share intelligence with each other and it can result in a reduction in redundancies. Usually, local law enforcement agencies feed any intelligence they may have to fusion centers or via various technological platforms. The problem seems to arise when federal authorities must share information with the local, state of tribal law enforcement agencies. This problem arises because of the classification of intelligence federal agencies may possess. The intelligence products can be secret, top secret, etc. Typically, individuals within local, state or tribal law enforcement agencies do not have security clearance therefore, they cannot obtain access to such information. To mitigate such practices, I believe a few personal within law enforcement agencies should hold such clearances and have access to the much-needed intelligence products. In theory this is a good idea but putting such an idea into practice seems to be a