Week 3 Assignment – Target Selection. NO PLAGARISM PROFESSOR USES TURNITIN

Investigative Intelligence- Chapter 6 Lecture Notes

 

TARGET SELECTION

 

Many analysts receive little direction and are responsible for targeting decisions.

 

1. Recording crime details

 

• Most targeting decisions are based on recorded crime details.

 

• Many variables are recorded, but few analysts have time to analyze them. Forexample, modus operandi is a variable that is little understood for targeting.

 

• Distance between crime events is believed to be a reliable indicator for crimelinkages.

 

• ViCAP is a initiative that tries to better utilize modus operandi variables, but suffers from under‐reporting.

 

1. Threat assessments

 

• Published threat assessments, often from agencies with national or regionalresponsibility, is a way to influence the target selection of local agencies.

 

• Harm, and social harm based models are starting to feature in threatassessments. Met Police have four types: social, economic, political, indirect.

 

• Risk assessment may be a more accurate name for these documents.

 

OBJECTIVE TARGETING AND OFFENDER SELF‐SELECTION

 

• The snowball approach to targeting criminal gangs works to increase theintelligence available to police departments, but it runs the risk of focusingpolice attention on the ‘usual suspects’.

 

• This creates a positive feedback loop. For example, RCMP Sleipnir programdrew attention to the need for information on outlaw motorcycle gangs, andthis request alone made police departments focus more on OMCGs.

 

• Offender self‐selection may be a more ethical approach. Existing criminaltriggers are used to identify more serious offenders. Offenders bring policeattention on themselves.

 

1. Playing well with others

 

• Information sharing is a US priority after 9/11 but the organization of policedepartments militates against it.

 

• Small agencies rarely have the resources to address wider concerns.

 

• Bureaucratic hurdles often limit info sharing, so informal networks spring upto solve the problem.

 

• Solutions include team‐based task forces, wider dissemination of intelligenceproducts, and liaison officers attached to neighboring agencies.

 

INFORMATION COLLATION

 

• The intelligence cycle is often adhered to in a more informal state, and anunderstanding of the desired style of final product can help with collation.

 

• Intelligence requirements provide a structured mechanism, useful whenagencies collaborate

 

• Strategic and Tactical Intelligence Requirements (SIRs and TIRs)

 

• But… over‐reliance on law enforcement data can create products withsignificant limitations.

 

1. Improving information sharing

 

• Kelling and Bratton note, ‘The problem for American policing is not so muchgetting the intelligence but making sense of it and sharing it with those whocan use it’ (2006: 5).

 

1. A role for liaison officers?

 

• Liaison officers are becoming de rigor in many fusion centers and agenciesthat have to reach out across jurisdictional boundaries.

 

• However, few guidelines for the position of liaison officer exist.

 

1. Confidential informants

 

• Within intelligence‐led policing, informants have become a centralmechanism to better understand the criminal environment.

 

• Their use is limited, in that few offenders have a view of the bigger picture ofcriminality outside their own immediate area.

 

• A key part of intelligence‐led policing is that informants should be used in amore strategic manner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES

 

• Note that results analysis is simply evaluation, a key component of POP.

 

1. Strategic thinking

 

• Strategic analysis often involves a range of skills that are quite different fromtactical analysis. This is often a challenging area for police analysts, and onethat is not high on training agendas.