The Intelligence Function
Issues in Crime and Justice
CJ 4610 – PA 5315
Professor James J. Drylie
Week 7
Law Enforcement Intelligence
Intelligence-led Policing
• Brief history of LE Intelligence
• Intelligence-led Policing
– The Integration of Community Policing
• Classification, Products, & Dissemination
• Managing the Intelligence Function
A Brief History
• The LE Intelligence Process has been
troubling since the very beginning.
– Why?
• The practice of maintaining records of citizen
activities often involving people who had not
committed any crime.
• These practices violate the fundamental
constitutional guarantees and offends the
American sense of fairness.
• Early intelligence initiatives typically lacked
focus.
• Both issues provide lessons learned.
The early years
• Begin in earnest in the 1920s.
• Relied on military practices as guiding
points.
– The dossier system
• A collection of diverse raw information about
people who were thought to be involved with
criminals, or persons who were thought to be a
threat to the safety of the community.
• By the 1930s the Depression bought focus
to other issues and intelligence was
relegated to the back burner for a time.
The Ku Klux Klan
• The House Committee on Un-American
Activities.
– Martin Dies (D-Tex) a KKK supporter fuled the
fires of concern about Communism in the
United States.
– The Red Scare.
• 1940 – 1950s
– WWII and the concern over the forming of the
Soviet Union
– Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis)
• The use and expansion of dossier-files
– Many people caught up in this were simply exercising
their constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and
addressing grievances.
• 1960s
– Civil Rights Era
• The use of dossiers increased significantly.
– An old tool that proved effective.
» Effective for what?
Early recommendations
• The primary use of intelligence in the
early- to mid-twentieth century was in the
area of national security
• Threats were perceived as both
– Internal
• Sympathizers
– External
• Fascism
• Communism
• By the end of WWII the major focus was on
the Soviet Union.
• Even with the advent of the Intelligence
Community in 1947 there were problems
associated with
– Structure
– Organization
– Coordination
• A series of federal commissions, beginning
in 1948 with the Hoover Commission, made
relevant recommendations for improvement.
• Dulles Report – 1949
– Recommended that the CIA provide greater
coordination for the IC, including the FBI.
• Schlesinger Report – 1971
– Recommended a reorganization of the IC
• There were identified failures in
– Coordination
– Leadership
• Church Committee – 1971
– Both the CIA and FBI conducted operations
that violated constitutional rights.
• COINTELPRO
LOCAL Law Enforcement
• Warren Commission – 1964
– The commission that investigated the
Kennedy Assassination recommended that
federal agencies, notably the Secret Service
and the FBI, needed to work more closely
with local law enforcement.
• A call for increased information sharing.
• Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice – 1967
– Every major city police agency should have
an Intel Unit to focus solely on gathering and
processing information on organized crime.
• National Advisory Commission on CJ
Standards and Goals – 1971
recommended the following
– Establishing the Intel Function
• Each state should develop a centralized operation
• Establish regional networks with contiguous states
• Each local LEA should have an intel function
– Intel Function Operations
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State & local LEAs support the federal agencies
Develop operational policies & procedures
Designated Intel Officer reporting to CLEO
Develop policies for screening, securing,
disseminate intel-related information
Lessons Learned
• History has shown us that
– The dossier-system provides little insight
• Analysis of the information is necessary
– Improper collection of information has a
“chilling effect” on the community
– To be effective, Intel Units must be proactive
– There needs to be a clear distinction between
• National security intelligence
• Law enforcement intelligence
– Targeting people is unlawful without evidence
of some criminal predicate
• Retaining information in intel files is
improper unless there is sustainable
evidence of criminal involvement.
• A full-time LE intel function should be
organized professionally and staffed with
personnel trained in analysis and intel
preparation.
• Must be clear lines of communication
between intel units and decision makers.
• Regular evaluation of units and function.
• Information sharing is a priority.
Intelligence-Led Policing
• Community policing has established a
natural foundation for Intelligence-led
policing.
– CP develops skills in police officers that
directly supports new CT responsibilities.
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Scientific approach to problem solving
Environmental scanning
Effective communication with public
Fear reduction
Community mobilization to deal with problems
• The positive nature of COP/citizen
relationships promote a continuous and
reliable transfer of information.
• The Office of Domestic Preparedness
describes the role of CP in the intel
process
– Provides information to CP contacts
– Facilitates exchange of information
– Ensures community awareness
– Encourages prevention, proactive policing,
and close working relationships.
Shared practices
• Information management
– CP - information gained helps define
parameters of problems
– ILP – information input is an essential
ingredient
• Two-way communication
– CP – information is sought from public
– ILP – public provides valuable information
• Data analysis
– CP – crime analysis
– ILP – analysis is critical to threat management
• Problem solving
– CP – used to reconcile community conditions
– ILP – same process reconciles factors related
to vulnerability.
• Both CP & ILP require an investment by
the organization and the community
– At all levels
– And involving all components
The COPMSTAT Comparison
COMPSTAT
Commonality
ILP
Single jurisdiction
Prevention
Multijurisdictional
Incident driven
Org. flexibility
Threat driven
Crime mapping
Input
Commodity flow
Drives operations Bottom-up
Patrol, Tactical, CI operational needs
Analysis of
offender
Drives operations
JTTF, OC, TFs
Analysis of
enterprise
Four Broad Questions
• Who poses a threat?
• Who is doing what with whom?
• What is the MO of those who poses the
threat?
• What is needed to catch offenders and
prevent incidents or trends?
Illicit Commodities
• Important for police officers to understand
and appreciate how commodities flow in
criminal and terrorist enterprises.
– Criminals exist to earn illegal profits through
the trafficking of illegal commodities
– Terrorists also rely on and use similar tactics.
• Human nature is generally consistent
regardless of the enterprise
– Understanding commodity flows in a general
sense allows for recognition under a variety of
circumstances.
Public education
• A critical element of ILP
• Community education programs should
have specific outcomes.
– Whether it is to reduce fear or enlist
volunteers there are four general factors that
are incorporated:
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Know what to observe
Know what is suspicious
Known what to report
Know how to report
See page 49
– From this we know what happens next
Civil Rights
• Regardless of circumstances, law
enforcement intelligence should be
approached with a solid base that protects
citizen’s civil rights.
Classification
• Necessary to understand and differentiate
between the different types of law
enforcement intelligence.
– Intel based on the nature of analysis
– Intel products
– Operational intel
– Intel based on orientation of analysis
– Dissemination
The Nature of Analysis
• Two terms generally used
– Raw intelligence
• Information obtained from a reliable source, not
necessarily corroborated
• Usually time sensitive
– Finished intelligence
• Fully analyzed raw intelligence
• Corroborated
• Finished intel becomes the product of the process
of analysis
Intelligence Products
• When intelligence reaches the finished
state it must be presented in report form
• The report should
– Identify the targeted consumer of the
information
• Patrol
• CID
– Convey critical information
– Identify time parameters
– Provide for follow-up
Operational Intelligence
• Law enforcement agencies may at times
need to maintain information that is raw or
finished that places the agency in a
controversial position.
• Information on persons/groups may be
retained for two reasons:
– The potential to commit crime
– Pose a bona fide threat
• The difficult balance is to ensure that there
is no constitutional violation.
Orientation of the Analysis
• SLTLE intelligence is typically described
as:
– Tactical
• Used in the development of a criminal case
involving
– A continuing criminal enterprise
– Multijurisdictional crime
– Strategic
• Examines crime patterns and trends to assist in
decision making
• Similar to crime analysis, but focuses more so on
specific crime types
Dissemination
• This is the heart of information sharing.
• Prior to dissemination there must be
policies in place on what and to whom
information is to be shared.
– The right to know
– The need to know
• The Third Agency Rule
– A prohibition of sharing intelligence outside of
the agency is prohibited.
– Affords control over the information.