COIN comes home to assist policing

[bourbon]

The Mass State Police C3 Policing Project in Springfield was featured on 60 Minutes last week:

Counterinsurgency Cops: Military tactics fight street crime. CBS News 60 Minutes, 5 May 2013.

[bourbon]

Police clicking into crimes using new software - Harvard students’ software seeks to help police dismantle networks, by Aaron Lester. The Boston Globe, 18 March 2013.

Called Nucleik, the software is being tested by Gregorczyk and his gang unit. Nucleik is the brainchild of three Harvard University engineering students who hatched it as a class project for a professor with friends in law enforcement. The students were struck by how little technology was used by police to organize all the information they gather in their surveillance of gangs.

“We’re seeing these guys fighting crime everyday, putting their lives on the line everyday, but they’re not doing it with the right tools,” said Scott Crouch, cofounder of Nucleik.

So they set about to create a single platform for multiple uses, whether as a mobile app used in the field for street-level info or as a powerful desktop tool that could sift through mountains of data. The Springfield gang unit has been trying out the first version of Nucleik since mid-summer.

“Normally you’d need probably five pieces of software to do all of this and it would take hours. Now with one software, it takes minutes,” said Crouch.

The MSP C3 Policing Project has worked Harvard bioengineering professor Major Kit Parker, who enlisted his design engineering class to help tackle project related problems. One output from that was a set of software tools designed to support C3 Policing – with the help of Harvard's innovation lab, the students who originally developed the tools have launched a start-up called Nucleik.

[JohnBertetto]

I am currently working on a similar software package. Dynamic SNA, geospatial and spatio-temporal, and social media analysis.

[davidbfpo]

John B.,

I recommend you look through the Social Media thread, especially for the latest posts on SNA in London:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=5954

[davidbfpo]

SWC Member & CPD officer John Bertetto's latest offering 'Counter-Gang Strategy, Part 1, Creating guiding principles through lessons learned in the fight against gangs & terror':http://www.lawofficer.com/article/ta...trategy-part-i

The editor's note:

This article is the first of two in a series adapted from the author's longer works, "Countering Criminal Street Gangs: Lessons from the Counterinsurgent Battlespace" and "Counter-Gang Strategy: Adapted COIN in Policing Criminal Street Gangs."

For a complete description of the principles and strategy described, visit the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board Executive website atwww.iletsbei.com/forum

[davidbfpo]

A short PBS video (7 mins):

A report from the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED delves into a wide-scale surveillance system being developed for police forces. How can the trade off between safety and privacy be negotiated as technology gets more and more sophisticated?

Link with a transcript:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-p...vacy-concerns/

The system originated from a counter-IED tactic in Iraq, so the clarity of the images has been reduced, so for example a number plate cannot be read. The system is more of a pointer after the event to look at other CCTV. That might explain why no-one has purchased it.

[davidbfpo]

Within a short article reviewing the growth of the DHS In New Mexico. centred around Albuquerque, are some comments by Tom Ridge, ex-DHS head, which I have not seen before:

The last thing in the world you want is a Department of Homeland Security involved in a day-to-day basis with traditional and state and local law enforcement. It’s not their role or their function, unless it’s related to terrorist activity.

On "fusion centres":

I think fusion centers are a great idea. I think the proliferation of fusion centers makes no sense. My vision then was to start with building fusion centers that covered four or five states for all hazards, natural weather events and law enforcement sharing. They’ve gone much beyond that. It would be foolish to build that capacity and limit it exclusively to dealing with terrorism..

APD's deputy responded the rejected the notion that DHS has become too involved in local policing:

I don’t believe they are taking on too active of a role. We are collaborating with HSI as a force multiplier and we are sharing resources.

Link:http://www.abqjournal.com/390807/new...uparmored.html