Law Enforcement Analysis

[Rifleman]

My personal experiences are with a small (30 sworn) municipal agency: not big city but not quite podunk Andy and Barney. In a lot of ways we are too big to be little and too little to be big.

We are mostly reactive. Proactivity is often limited to being a visible presence in the community until something is in progress. It just seems to be the nature of the beast.

Slowandsteady, my thoughts on your thoughts:

1) Reports (by analysts) that describe crimes/criminal groups, there is no "so what/now what" mindset.

Let's say the report was on an outlaw motorcycle gang and they're coming through your area on a "run." Proactivity (the "so what/now what") will be limited to increasing officer presence and making as many contacts with them as you have a legal reason to do (for traffic infractions, noise complaints, etc.) in order to field interview and ID as many as possible. A high volume of penny ante (aka "chicken s**t") traffic stops can also lead to a lot of warrant arrests but that's about the limit of proactivity. You can't just use intelligence reports that say these bikers are known to be bad dudes to have a SWAT raid on the bar they're drinking in. That would be PH (probable hunch). That darn 4th Amendment again!

2) A reluctance by middle and senior management to be more tactical in their approach, for example working with different units to develop a more detailed picture of the environment they are operating in.

It happens to be sure but see answer to #3 below. Also, sometimes politics plays a role with "different units" when it comes time to act on intelligence. For instance, we recently had some pro-life demonstrators in town and we knew from intelligence they were somewhat radical in their approach. The sheriff wanted his deputies to be seen by the community but not take much enforcement action. When it came time to make arrests the PD were the ones going hands on and getting our pictures in the paper.

3) Communication - we have had guys working different ends of the same case from the same office, and yet not realized this. I believe the challenge is getting officers comfortable that sharing information won't compromise their case/job security.

I'm sure this happens more often in large agencies but we mostly cooperate well internally as well as with the sheriff's office and to a lesser extent the highway patrol. For instance, we often have auto burglars hitting cars in the town and county in the same night and our report writing system will link the related cases so everyone is briefed. Having said that, sometimes things will fall through the cracks - just happens.