National Fusion Center Conference

The National Fusion Center Conference was held in San Francisco this week. "Wired Blog Network" had a post critical of the fusion center concept.

Jerry Ratcliffe's new book, Intelligence-Led Policing, concludes with the sentence:
"One challenge for the immediate future may well be enrolling public support and explaining to communities the value of intelligence-led policing in keeping them safe and secure." (page 237 - BTW - note that at the book link you will find MS PowerPoint slides on book subject matter)

Five principles are identified in the International Association of Chiefs of Police report From Hometown Security to Homeland Security: IACP's Principles For A Locally Designed and Nationally Coordinated Homeland Security Strategy:

" * All terrorism is local. "Local, not federal, authorities have the primary responsibility for preventing, responding to and recovering from terrorist attacks."
* Prevention is paramount. "For too long, federal strategies have minimized the importance of prevention, instead focusing on response and recovery."
* Hometown security is homeland security. Because of their day-to-day work, "state and local law enforcement officers are uniquely situated to identify, investigate and apprehend suspected terrorists."
* Homeland security strategies must be coordinated nationally, not federally. Federal agencies have too often limited state, tribal and local public-safety community input "to participation in advisory panels and working groups that have little impact on policy development." A truly national effort would ensure that all levels of government-local, tribal, state and federal-participate in policy design and development "as full and equal partners."
* Bottom-up engineering, public-safety diversity and noncompetitive collaboration are key. "A truly successful national strategy must recognize, embrace and value the vast diversity among state and local law enforcement and public safety agencies. A one-size-fits-all approach will fail to secure our homeland."

If fusion centers are a step in the direction of intelligence-led policing, they will have to benefit local level law enforcement - and address the crime threats that affect the communities in which citizens work, play, and sleep. Citizens have to believe in the value of ILP in their lives - not just as a nation, but in their communities.

How much effort do we put toward educating the public about the value of crime and intelligence analysis? Citizens are the sources of government funds - until they believe we need more crime and intelligence analysis, they will prefer to have one more police car on their street rather than analysts in an office thinking about how to prevent real crime.

Educating the public is mandatory - but who will do it?