Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
In my LE career, with a large part in intelligence, each time I noted there was a bigger gap between intelligence and operations. Intelligence by the 1990's was better understood by management to provide situational awareness, where it generally failed was to direct resources to problems and suspects - as so much effort was absorbed by response policing.

Pre-emptive action was rare and all too often intelligence was demanded after an event to guide an investigation.

The advent of better I.T., notably easy to access databases, made it easy for users to see intelligence as a reference library and not something they should contribute to. Yes, there can be security issues, IMHO they are nothing compared to the practice of officers / staff retaining information and alas forgetting.

Intelligence needs to add value and when directed invariably achieves results.
I agree, I think it's sometimes seen as a 'silver bullet', as opposed to a tool that can be used in specific scenarios to provide support to officers in the field/investigations.