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."
Thanks to my connection to academics early in my days as a crime analyst, I learned of the two associations for analysts, the International Association of Crime Analysts and the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts. Since I needed all the help I could get, I joined both of them right away.
I learned very quickly that the associations were different, that the crime analysts' association catered mainly to local level law enforcement, and the intelligence analysts' association was geared more to those at the state and federal level working on case investigations. Yet, for me, that seemed to be a barrier to the growth of the profession.
When I was a crime analyst at the local level, I did not know that I would someday work at the federal level of law enforcement. The work I did as a crime analyst was quite different that what I did as an investigative analyst but the skill sets were essentially the same.
Often during my career as a law enforcement analyst, I observed instances in which different echelons of analysts were oblivious of one another if not downright unsupportive. There was a sense of class differences, a willful lack of interest in those unlike them, and/or a blind assumption that all analysts should be or are doing the same thing. Which is utterly ridiculous and sabotaging to the greater good of all analysts.
The need for two associations is real because all analysts do not focus on the same things. At the local level, most often the analyst is faced with vast amounts of raw data that must be analyzed, interpreted, synthesized and utilized for many purposes such as providing statistics for police managers, identification of crime patterns for tactical problem-solving, and determining hot spots of crime for prevention efforts. At the state and federal level, more often analysts are working on specific investigations, researching criminal suspects using commercial and government databases, analyzing financial and communication records, looking for information that supports prosecuting individuals for specific crime activities that they may uncover in their analysis.
All aspects of analysis are important and helpful in policing efforts.
Lesson: Understand everything that analysts can do!
I was able to participate in a focus group with Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe that resulted in this report:
Integrated Crime Analysis and Intelligence: Enhanced Information Management for Law Enforcement Leaders
A quote from me on page 16 of the report:
"Analysts may employ nonlinear approaches to analysis by synthesizing information obtained in a number of methods to see a more complete “whole” of a crime problem. These methods may include crime mapping, statistical analyses, field observations of high-crime and low-crime areas, reading crime and intelligence reports, talking to officers, suspects, and victims, looking for evidence links, as well as gathering information on known offenders residing in or near the jurisdiction. Merging crime and intelligence analysis will provide a more accurate “whole picture” and improve the meaningfulness and utility of information generated by law enforcement analysts."
I wrote that before I worked at the federal level of law enforcement, where prevention is seldom
the focus of law enforcement policy. We are still in the infancy of using analysis and evidence for public safety improvement. You have the ability to move the ball forward, however slowly. I remember an old timer officer telling me once, changing policing is like changing the direction of an huge ocean-liner - it takes time.
Public safety depends on changing the direction.
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