From the article "The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program," by retired FBI profiler Greg Cooper, page 72 in the Forensic Examiner Fall 2007 issue:
"There are literally thousands of separate and independent federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. Although each of the agencies share common goals in their distinct jurisdictions of “keeping the peace,” “protecting the public,” and “maintaining law and order,” they do not generally share common databases or records management systems. Amazingly, each agency maintains separate and independent systems aligned with their own geographical or legal jurisdiction.
This condition exists in spite of their common goals and the common sense of sharing and maintaining inter-dependent systems that could otherwise effectively facilitate coordination and cooperation between agencies."
During his career, Mr. Cooper supervised the ViCAP unit and subsequently served as Chief of Police in Provo Utah.
Click on the FBI Bulletin Article on ViCAP for an explanation of how the FBI has tried to improve its database designed for information sharing among agencies to track serial violent criminals.
Read the articles at the links below for examples of the consequences of the failure of our current policing systems in using the existing ViCAP system:
FBI System to ID Serial Killers Went Unused in Sniper Case
Murder One Jurisdicton at a Time
How can we improve this situation?
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