Detecting supply chain risk with a deep dive crime analysis is an interesting article about crime in the fashion industry, in just-style.com, which states that trade in the fake and counterfeit groups currently constitutes 3.3% of the global trade and is rising. In 2016 in the United States alone the of the fake goods was 509 billion dollars, according to the article.
Crime analysis can help identify risks through determining hot locations of such crimes.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
Solvability Factors
To effectively manage your time as an analyst, you should consider the solvability of crimes. Unfortunately, we will never "solve" all crimes (find out the perpetrator(s)), and, even more unfortunate, we cannot prevent all crime. That said, don't spend too much of your precious time chasing crime problems that cannot be solved, unless your work leads to better efforts at prevention. Consider solvability factors. Realize that the investigators in your agency will lose respect for you if you produce analytical products for crimes they cannot solve due to a lack of solvability factors. Look at the Problem Solving Tool Guides if you have the kind of crime problem that could be prevented, even though solvability factors are few or non-existent. Then work with community police officers or police managers interested in developing problem-solving responses.
Solvability Factors:
Is there:
-A witness to the crime?
-Knowledge of a suspect’s name?
-Knowledge of where a suspect can be located?
-A description of a suspect?
-Identification of a suspect?
-Property with identifiable characteristics, marks, or numbers that can be
traced?
-Existence of a significant MO?
-Presence of a description which identifies a vehicle used in the crime?
-Positive results from a crime scene / evidence search?
-Belief that a crime may be solved with publicity and/or reasonable
additional investigative effort?
-An opportunity for but one person to have committed the crime?
Covington Police Department Memo on Use of Solvability Factors
Solvability Factors:
Is there:
-A witness to the crime?
-Knowledge of a suspect’s name?
-Knowledge of where a suspect can be located?
-A description of a suspect?
-Identification of a suspect?
-Property with identifiable characteristics, marks, or numbers that can be
traced?
-Existence of a significant MO?
-Presence of a description which identifies a vehicle used in the crime?
-Positive results from a crime scene / evidence search?
-Belief that a crime may be solved with publicity and/or reasonable
additional investigative effort?
-An opportunity for but one person to have committed the crime?
Covington Police Department Memo on Use of Solvability Factors
Friday, April 26, 2019
#4 Lessons From My Story
I will post a "lesson" from my life as an analyst once a week until I run out of them! Skip over these if they don't interest you. For those who read on, consider the power of your own stories and where they might take you. And if you want to follow these post threads, in the future click on the label "my story."
Partnerships with academia and the interns provided by them can help you expand in areas that are your weaknesses, as well as support and solidify your value as an analyst with your police managers. This is especially true at the local level of law enforcement; at the federal level, there is more concern for investigative secrecy due to the fact you are trying to build cases to prosecute. Local level analysts can reap the rewards of relationships with academia more effectively than analysts working "higher" up the law enforcement food chain.
Dr. Pamela Beal was my first academic ally - she was working with the University of Buffalo and connected me to GIS interns as well as generalists. I had many interns in my ten years at the Buffalo Police Department, and, in those first few years, they probably taught me more than I taught them. I learned how to map crime, all about Excel and pivot tables (the golden ticket of crime data analysis in my humble opinion), and everything in between - skills that I sorely needed to make up for my technical skill deficits.
Interns can also help as a force multiplier - they can do some time-consuming tasks (such as cleaning and organizing data) that will allow you to focus on meaningful analytical work.
A short time after I started working as a crime analyst, Robert Heibel contacted me from Mercyhurst College's Research and Intelligence Analyst Program, which is now known as Ridge College’s Institute of Intelligence Studies and Applied Sciences. Bob was an early advocate of academic programs to promote at the growth of the analyst in law enforcement as well as in national security. He wanted to place interns at my agency working under me, and did so. We became friends and later on he invited me to colloquiums where I met world leaders in the field. Connecting with him offered me many opportunities for professional growth, as I will discuss in future posts.
Lesson: Find your academic supporters!
To listen to my conversations with my first two academic supporters on Blog Talk Radio, go to:
Pamela Beal on Grafitti
Pam Beal on Reducing Street Prostitution
Robert Heibel: Knowledge Workers in Intelligence
Partnerships with academia and the interns provided by them can help you expand in areas that are your weaknesses, as well as support and solidify your value as an analyst with your police managers. This is especially true at the local level of law enforcement; at the federal level, there is more concern for investigative secrecy due to the fact you are trying to build cases to prosecute. Local level analysts can reap the rewards of relationships with academia more effectively than analysts working "higher" up the law enforcement food chain.
Dr. Pamela Beal was my first academic ally - she was working with the University of Buffalo and connected me to GIS interns as well as generalists. I had many interns in my ten years at the Buffalo Police Department, and, in those first few years, they probably taught me more than I taught them. I learned how to map crime, all about Excel and pivot tables (the golden ticket of crime data analysis in my humble opinion), and everything in between - skills that I sorely needed to make up for my technical skill deficits.
Interns can also help as a force multiplier - they can do some time-consuming tasks (such as cleaning and organizing data) that will allow you to focus on meaningful analytical work.
A short time after I started working as a crime analyst, Robert Heibel contacted me from Mercyhurst College's Research and Intelligence Analyst Program, which is now known as Ridge College’s Institute of Intelligence Studies and Applied Sciences. Bob was an early advocate of academic programs to promote at the growth of the analyst in law enforcement as well as in national security. He wanted to place interns at my agency working under me, and did so. We became friends and later on he invited me to colloquiums where I met world leaders in the field. Connecting with him offered me many opportunities for professional growth, as I will discuss in future posts.
Lesson: Find your academic supporters!
To listen to my conversations with my first two academic supporters on Blog Talk Radio, go to:
Pamela Beal on Grafitti
Pam Beal on Reducing Street Prostitution
Robert Heibel: Knowledge Workers in Intelligence
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Monday, April 22, 2019
Technical Training Disappointments
If you have been working as a law enforcement for a period of time, you will run into at least one of these problems. You are not alone!
What problems? The problems that arises once you get back to your office after attending training on specific software products. Here are two examples:
What problems? The problems that arises once you get back to your office after attending training on specific software products. Here are two examples:
- you are trained in a software to use to analyze telephone records but no investigator gives you records to analyze for a year - by that time you have forgotten how to use the software
- you learn how to analyze bank records using a specific software and, like the situation above, you have no bank records to analyze for a long period of time, thus no practice, and have to learn as you go while the requestor waits impatiently for your analytical results
Here is an example of another, similar problem:
- you learn at a conference presentation that a very cool and potentially highly useful analytical tool is already available on a commercial database system you have, but find out later that your IT system's firewalls won't allow you to use the tool
These are just a few examples of many scenarios involving technical training disappointments you may experience as an analyst.
What to do?
If possible, get some records from previous investigations to analyze for practice. Fo the IT issue - see if you can use the commercial database on a standalone computer.
And if you cannot solve your problem, understand that you did not create it.
Managers of analysts need to put in place the strategies of follow-ups to training. Help your analysts get what they need to be successful! Encourage your investigators to use the tools your analysts have. Understand your analysts' IT needs and make IT solutions a priority, as well as fund your analysts' needs for equipment.
Friday, April 19, 2019
#3 Lessons From My Story
I will post a "lesson" from my life as an analyst once a week until I run out of them! Skip over these if they don't interest you. For those who read on, consider the power of your own stories and where they might take you. And if you want to follow these post threads, in the future click on the label "my story."
When you begin working as an analyst in a law enforcement jurisdiction, it will take you years to learn what is "normal" crime - this limits your ability to discern that which is significant in your data sets.
When I began working as a crime analyst in a city dense with crime to analyze, I focused first on robberies. I recently read somewhere legit that 40% of robberies have unknown assailants - and even if that statistic is not exact, I found that paying attention to robberies, looking for robbery series (robberies committed by the same suspect(s)), was fruitful.
I began putting together a newsletter of crimes that I had analyzed in my non-techie, non-database-centered way - primarily in this mode because there were no accessible databases for me to use back then. However, I could review the daily crimes on our Intranet and collect them myself in my own spreadsheets.
One of the first series I identified was related to robberies of delivery truck drivers when they were outside of places making deliveries. There were ten such crimes in one month! Little did I know how irregular that was, because I did not know what was common and what was uncommon when I started. Fortunately, I was developing relationships within the department and a wise old officer who befriended me recognized the modus operandi and shared possible suspect information, which I could then pass on to detectives, along with dates, times, locations, weapons, vehicles, businesses affected, and suspect descriptions.
Lesson: Know your jurisdiction. Make no assumptions, even if you are an experienced analyst who has moved to a new job. You cannot know the norm of your crime until you have spent some time getting intimate with it. This is why hiring consultants or temporary analysts for local level law enforcement analysis is less likely to result in meaningful analysis. You need to build relationships with both the data and the people (social capital) in your agency. You need to be there.
Later, as an analyst at the federal level, working on major investigations, I needed to get familiar with what I was looking for and what mattered to investigators. It is not the same as working at the local level of policing as an analyst, but, similarly, it does take time to learn what matters. Each big case is different. Sometimes you have to learn about crimes that are unfamiliar to you. In my work situation, I had to get more intimate with the nuts and bolts of financial fraud schemes of all sorts. Being an analyst always involves continuous learning. You cannot be an effective analyst if you do not love to learn.
Here are some Problem Oriented Policing Guides to consider:
Analyzing Repeat Victimization
Robbery at Automated Teller Machines
Robbery of Convenience Stores
Robbery of Pharmacies
Robbery of Taxi Drivers
When you begin working as an analyst in a law enforcement jurisdiction, it will take you years to learn what is "normal" crime - this limits your ability to discern that which is significant in your data sets.
When I began working as a crime analyst in a city dense with crime to analyze, I focused first on robberies. I recently read somewhere legit that 40% of robberies have unknown assailants - and even if that statistic is not exact, I found that paying attention to robberies, looking for robbery series (robberies committed by the same suspect(s)), was fruitful.
I began putting together a newsletter of crimes that I had analyzed in my non-techie, non-database-centered way - primarily in this mode because there were no accessible databases for me to use back then. However, I could review the daily crimes on our Intranet and collect them myself in my own spreadsheets.
One of the first series I identified was related to robberies of delivery truck drivers when they were outside of places making deliveries. There were ten such crimes in one month! Little did I know how irregular that was, because I did not know what was common and what was uncommon when I started. Fortunately, I was developing relationships within the department and a wise old officer who befriended me recognized the modus operandi and shared possible suspect information, which I could then pass on to detectives, along with dates, times, locations, weapons, vehicles, businesses affected, and suspect descriptions.
Lesson: Know your jurisdiction. Make no assumptions, even if you are an experienced analyst who has moved to a new job. You cannot know the norm of your crime until you have spent some time getting intimate with it. This is why hiring consultants or temporary analysts for local level law enforcement analysis is less likely to result in meaningful analysis. You need to build relationships with both the data and the people (social capital) in your agency. You need to be there.
Later, as an analyst at the federal level, working on major investigations, I needed to get familiar with what I was looking for and what mattered to investigators. It is not the same as working at the local level of policing as an analyst, but, similarly, it does take time to learn what matters. Each big case is different. Sometimes you have to learn about crimes that are unfamiliar to you. In my work situation, I had to get more intimate with the nuts and bolts of financial fraud schemes of all sorts. Being an analyst always involves continuous learning. You cannot be an effective analyst if you do not love to learn.
Here are some Problem Oriented Policing Guides to consider:
Analyzing Repeat Victimization
Robbery at Automated Teller Machines
Robbery of Convenience Stores
Robbery of Pharmacies
Robbery of Taxi Drivers
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Intelligence Analysts
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Intelligence Analysts is an article for competitive intelligence analysts but relates to the work you do as law enforcement analysts.
Reading and learning from other analyst disciplines can help you expand your analytical toolbox and help you think more critically about new ways and means to increase your value.
Read more:
The 7 Secrets of Good Business Analysts
6 Traits of Highly Effective Data Analysts
What Great Data Analysts Do — and Why Every Organization Needs Them
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Equity Analysts
Reading and learning from other analyst disciplines can help you expand your analytical toolbox and help you think more critically about new ways and means to increase your value.
Read more:
The 7 Secrets of Good Business Analysts
6 Traits of Highly Effective Data Analysts
What Great Data Analysts Do — and Why Every Organization Needs Them
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Equity Analysts
Monday, April 15, 2019
For Analysts: Teach Them to Fish
"...if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn." ~Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
How many times does an officer, investigator, or agent come to you and ask you to do a search for something they could easily do themselves? What do you do when this happens?
Your main role as an analyst is to help; however, helping others do what they can do for themselves is a misuse of your time. You might want to do this occasionally as good public relations to prove your general attitude of helpfulness, but as a work policy you might run yourself ragged doing little tasks. You are training your co-workers to view you as less than you are. Your analytical capacity to do higher level, complicated, more value-added work will be underutilized.
What to do?
One solution:
Say yes but add the caveat - I will do it but I need you to watch me so that you can learn how to do it. After a few times your most persistent requestors will stop asking. Consistently show the requestors how to do their work. Teach them to fish!
How many times does an officer, investigator, or agent come to you and ask you to do a search for something they could easily do themselves? What do you do when this happens?
Your main role as an analyst is to help; however, helping others do what they can do for themselves is a misuse of your time. You might want to do this occasionally as good public relations to prove your general attitude of helpfulness, but as a work policy you might run yourself ragged doing little tasks. You are training your co-workers to view you as less than you are. Your analytical capacity to do higher level, complicated, more value-added work will be underutilized.
What to do?
One solution:
Say yes but add the caveat - I will do it but I need you to watch me so that you can learn how to do it. After a few times your most persistent requestors will stop asking. Consistently show the requestors how to do their work. Teach them to fish!
Friday, April 12, 2019
#2 Lessons From My Story
I will post a "lesson" from my life as an analyst once a week until I run out of them! Skip over these if they don't interest you. For those who read on, consider the power of your own stories and where they might take you. And if you want to follow these post threads, in the future click on the label "my story."
Expect the Unexpected: #2 Lessons From My Story
It took months and months, from the time to when I took the civil service exam to become a crime analyst, until I actually started. It took even longer to be hired to become Criminal Research Specialist (which had a later title name change to Investigative Analyst) for the United States Secret Service. I applied in a January then was not interviewed until September and then did not start work until the following June - approximately of a year and a half of waiting!
The lesson from this part of my story: have lots of patience!
Another lesson which astounded me when I became a crime analyst which persisted throughout my career: most people in your workplace don't know what you are supposed to do nor what you can do. It saddens me that, nearly twenty-two years later, this is still the reality for many law enforcement analysts.
When I started working at the Buffalo Police Department in 1997, I was the first crime analyst. One naive analyst for 20,000 Part One Crimes! Me, with no computer skills and no one to guide me on site. An overwhelming amount of crime to dig into with an Records Management System in development and no automation, except for a daily posting of crimes on an Intranet that I could read. Progress happens - now there are at least 18 analysts assigned to the county crime analysis unit which includes the city and its suburbs.
I was (fortunately) sent to a lot of training financed by grant funding, training no one else in the department was familiar with. This training saved me - I learned that crime analysis was real and that other crime analysts would help me as I tried to figure out what to do. Thankfully, because expectations were practically non-existent, I had a great deal of time to learn on the job. I joined a listserver, which I learned about from an academic working with the department, and connected to analysts from around the world; their advice helped me so much. This cyber-networking also helped me stay sane in the challenging work world that I found myself working in. I was not isolated. Others were experiencing my challenges - others had surmounted them.
Gil Kerlikowske was the Commissioner of my police department at the time I was hired; he would move on a year later to become Chief of Police in Seattle, then later the Drug Czar of the United States. It was his idea to hire a crime analyst, and then he left. That did not help me. Another mini-lesson here for analysts: when the leader who understand your role leaves, your role will be more difficult until a new law enforcement manager fills his or her shoes.
To have a job where you expect others to tell you what you should do, which is how most normal jobs operate, and instead find yourself in a job that you must invent based on the outside training you get, felt preposterous to me. How unexpected! I did not know this was possible!
Expect the unexpected as a law enforcement analyst - you won't be disappointed! It is the surprise that keeps on giving.
I recently watched the mini-series Manhunt on Acorn TV. In this show, based on a true crime story, the main character, DCI Colin Sutton (played by Martin Clunes of Doc Martin fame) heads an investigative team trying to solve a murder case. He works for the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) and his wife is an analyst with a local level police department. She offers to help him using her analytical tools but he is dismissive of her. Of course, it turns out he solves the case without her help, following his hunches despite those who don't believe he is doing his job right. Yet, I could not help but ponder the role of the analyst, not even believed in her marriage to a law enforcer. The misunderstood, unsupported, lonely life of an analyst...
Make sure you get support from others! You may have to look far and wide for it, but it is there.
Expect the Unexpected: #2 Lessons From My Story
It took months and months, from the time to when I took the civil service exam to become a crime analyst, until I actually started. It took even longer to be hired to become Criminal Research Specialist (which had a later title name change to Investigative Analyst) for the United States Secret Service. I applied in a January then was not interviewed until September and then did not start work until the following June - approximately of a year and a half of waiting!
The lesson from this part of my story: have lots of patience!
Another lesson which astounded me when I became a crime analyst which persisted throughout my career: most people in your workplace don't know what you are supposed to do nor what you can do. It saddens me that, nearly twenty-two years later, this is still the reality for many law enforcement analysts.
When I started working at the Buffalo Police Department in 1997, I was the first crime analyst. One naive analyst for 20,000 Part One Crimes! Me, with no computer skills and no one to guide me on site. An overwhelming amount of crime to dig into with an Records Management System in development and no automation, except for a daily posting of crimes on an Intranet that I could read. Progress happens - now there are at least 18 analysts assigned to the county crime analysis unit which includes the city and its suburbs.
I was (fortunately) sent to a lot of training financed by grant funding, training no one else in the department was familiar with. This training saved me - I learned that crime analysis was real and that other crime analysts would help me as I tried to figure out what to do. Thankfully, because expectations were practically non-existent, I had a great deal of time to learn on the job. I joined a listserver, which I learned about from an academic working with the department, and connected to analysts from around the world; their advice helped me so much. This cyber-networking also helped me stay sane in the challenging work world that I found myself working in. I was not isolated. Others were experiencing my challenges - others had surmounted them.
Gil Kerlikowske was the Commissioner of my police department at the time I was hired; he would move on a year later to become Chief of Police in Seattle, then later the Drug Czar of the United States. It was his idea to hire a crime analyst, and then he left. That did not help me. Another mini-lesson here for analysts: when the leader who understand your role leaves, your role will be more difficult until a new law enforcement manager fills his or her shoes.
To have a job where you expect others to tell you what you should do, which is how most normal jobs operate, and instead find yourself in a job that you must invent based on the outside training you get, felt preposterous to me. How unexpected! I did not know this was possible!
Expect the unexpected as a law enforcement analyst - you won't be disappointed! It is the surprise that keeps on giving.
I recently watched the mini-series Manhunt on Acorn TV. In this show, based on a true crime story, the main character, DCI Colin Sutton (played by Martin Clunes of Doc Martin fame) heads an investigative team trying to solve a murder case. He works for the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) and his wife is an analyst with a local level police department. She offers to help him using her analytical tools but he is dismissive of her. Of course, it turns out he solves the case without her help, following his hunches despite those who don't believe he is doing his job right. Yet, I could not help but ponder the role of the analyst, not even believed in her marriage to a law enforcer. The misunderstood, unsupported, lonely life of an analyst...
Make sure you get support from others! You may have to look far and wide for it, but it is there.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Monday, April 8, 2019
10 steps to effective intelligence-led policing (ILP)
10 steps to effective intelligence-led policing (ILP) is a PoliceOne.com article by Cole Zercoe.
Step "10" in this article is an important one - if police management changes and the new commanders are not committed to ILP, it will, in effect, die... unless it is already solidly embedded in the agency's practices. You cannot have ILP without police management commitment.
"10. COMMAND COMMITMENT
Finally, a long-term, sustainable ILP initiative is obviously dependent on the support of leadership – even through a change in leadership. The BJA found this to be a primary concern among all 10 agencies they surveyed, and many of them addressed this issue by having an internal succession plan that ensured the incoming leadership had already committed to the ILP programs. In other agencies, leadership tenure was long enough that the ILP initiatives became institutionalized."
Chattanooga, TN 's PD seems committed to ILP.
Read:
New Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy outlines plans for department
WTVC NewsChannel 9
Published on Jun 4, 2015
Step "10" in this article is an important one - if police management changes and the new commanders are not committed to ILP, it will, in effect, die... unless it is already solidly embedded in the agency's practices. You cannot have ILP without police management commitment.
"10. COMMAND COMMITMENT
Finally, a long-term, sustainable ILP initiative is obviously dependent on the support of leadership – even through a change in leadership. The BJA found this to be a primary concern among all 10 agencies they surveyed, and many of them addressed this issue by having an internal succession plan that ensured the incoming leadership had already committed to the ILP programs. In other agencies, leadership tenure was long enough that the ILP initiatives became institutionalized."
Chattanooga, TN 's PD seems committed to ILP.
Read:
New Chattanooga Police Chief David Roddy outlines plans for department
WTVC NewsChannel 9
Published on Jun 4, 2015
Friday, April 5, 2019
#1 Lessons From My Story
I will post a "lesson" from my life as an analyst once a week until I run out of them! Skip over these if they don't interest you. For those who read on, consider the power of your own stories and where they might take you. And if you want to follow these post threads, in the future click on the label "my story."
How It Started: #1 Lessons From My Story
On a lovely autumn day in Buffalo (we do have them), my sister showed me a civil service job announcement for the City of Buffalo for the position of Crime Analyst. At that time, she was working for the city and I was working for New York State as a Habilitation Specialist, on a behavioral intervention team that helped the families and caregivers of developmentally disabled individuals of all ages - individuals who had "behavior problems." It was a psychology position wherein I analyzed behaviors and developed plans to hopefully improve the difficult-to-change behaviors. The treatment plans I designed always included very simple statistics and ratios, and often integrated visualization charts for the clients who could not read.
Would I qualify to take the civil service test to become a crime analyst? Somehow I did. And lucky me, because my sister and I shared a love of Agatha Christie novels, she shared the notice of the test; we both thought "crime analyst" sounded quite interesting. I though maybe I could use my grey cells to detect like Hercule Poirot.
Needless to say, I scored high on the exam and qualified for an interview, then I was able to persuade those who interviewed me for the crime analyst position that indeed crime was a behavior and I was good at analyzing behavior. I had NO computer skills and no criminal justice background.
So what is the lesson? Go for it! If you want to be a crime analyst and you are not from the traditional job-seekers' criminal justice educational credentials and/or with law enforcement experience, this does not mean you will not make a good crime analyst. It may be more difficult to get the position, but if you have any chance at all - take it!
The other lesson is this: if you want to hire a good crime analyst, keep an open mind and consider hiring the person who has not followed the common trajectory into the job.
While my story is my own subjective experience, I have other information to support my story lessons in this post. For my book, Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change In Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis, I interviewed 52 persons, mainly law enforcement analysts, but including some experts in law enforcement analysis who were not practicing analysts.
Many of these persons did not have a criminal justice educational backgrounds, yet they were successful analyst practitioners. The variety of their educational backgrounds are listed in the book on page 26 - I have listed them below for your consideration. Note the wide variety!
Educational Background of Interview Subjects:
Accounting
Anthropology
Biology
Business Administration
Chemistry
Computer Science
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Economics
Education
Engineering
English
Human Resources
Geographic Information Systems
Geography
Government Administration
History
Journalism
Law Enforcement
Library Science
Management
Marketing
Mass Communications
Mathematics
Political Science
Psychology
Public Administration
Public Policy
Sociology
Theology
Urban Planning
Vocational Education
How It Started: #1 Lessons From My Story
On a lovely autumn day in Buffalo (we do have them), my sister showed me a civil service job announcement for the City of Buffalo for the position of Crime Analyst. At that time, she was working for the city and I was working for New York State as a Habilitation Specialist, on a behavioral intervention team that helped the families and caregivers of developmentally disabled individuals of all ages - individuals who had "behavior problems." It was a psychology position wherein I analyzed behaviors and developed plans to hopefully improve the difficult-to-change behaviors. The treatment plans I designed always included very simple statistics and ratios, and often integrated visualization charts for the clients who could not read.
Would I qualify to take the civil service test to become a crime analyst? Somehow I did. And lucky me, because my sister and I shared a love of Agatha Christie novels, she shared the notice of the test; we both thought "crime analyst" sounded quite interesting. I though maybe I could use my grey cells to detect like Hercule Poirot.
Needless to say, I scored high on the exam and qualified for an interview, then I was able to persuade those who interviewed me for the crime analyst position that indeed crime was a behavior and I was good at analyzing behavior. I had NO computer skills and no criminal justice background.
So what is the lesson? Go for it! If you want to be a crime analyst and you are not from the traditional job-seekers' criminal justice educational credentials and/or with law enforcement experience, this does not mean you will not make a good crime analyst. It may be more difficult to get the position, but if you have any chance at all - take it!
The other lesson is this: if you want to hire a good crime analyst, keep an open mind and consider hiring the person who has not followed the common trajectory into the job.
While my story is my own subjective experience, I have other information to support my story lessons in this post. For my book, Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change In Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis, I interviewed 52 persons, mainly law enforcement analysts, but including some experts in law enforcement analysis who were not practicing analysts.
Many of these persons did not have a criminal justice educational backgrounds, yet they were successful analyst practitioners. The variety of their educational backgrounds are listed in the book on page 26 - I have listed them below for your consideration. Note the wide variety!
Educational Background of Interview Subjects:
Accounting
Anthropology
Biology
Business Administration
Chemistry
Computer Science
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Economics
Education
Engineering
English
Human Resources
Geographic Information Systems
Geography
Government Administration
History
Journalism
Law Enforcement
Library Science
Management
Marketing
Mass Communications
Mathematics
Political Science
Psychology
Public Administration
Public Policy
Sociology
Theology
Urban Planning
Vocational Education
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Monday, April 1, 2019
Investigation of Hate Crimes
"Hate crimes are those in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation of any person."
IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center has a resource page for the Investigation of Hate Crimes. Law enforcement analysts benefit from a clear understanding of these types of crimes as they analyze their jurisdictions' information and intelligence. All of the policy documents can be found at this link.
IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center has a resource page for the Investigation of Hate Crimes. Law enforcement analysts benefit from a clear understanding of these types of crimes as they analyze their jurisdictions' information and intelligence. All of the policy documents can be found at this link.
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