There was a piece on TV one's Close up the other night about New Zealands version of Criminal Minds with an intelligience analyst.
It was good & all they were doing was an apprectiation much as we did in the army when planning patrols or tasks.
The comment was made about working smarter & of course the second part of that is not harder. It was also said you might not see police out there in public as much.
Now doing an appreciation or analyizing the information available is definitely a help. Problem is to get to the stage where some of that works in the current system, unlike the military situation, means you have to allow a few crimes to happen.
That is where the system has gone wrong. Not that it doesn't need the analysts but it needs to be used in conjunction with old fashioned patrolling impacting the crime before it happens. There still needs to be a lot more police out on the street. Not a 100 specialists for every police officer on the beat. Not only do they impact on crime they provide the information that can be used to either stop crime from happening or catch up with the criminals quickly.
It would also question where they get the information or enough to work on. Especially when business burglaries discovered in the morning get a form faxed through but no visit or householders don't get a visit for four days then asked why they cleaned up.
Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection
Effective combating of crime is a combination of the old, add in new techniques & prompt gaining of the information.
They also made the comment that burglaries are carried out within 5 km of where the burglar lives.
Funny one person arrested for murder resulted in a drop of 51% of burglaries in a commercial area I was one of the security patrols covering. He lived 40 km away.
On another occassion a group of us carrying out security noticed suspicious activity called police. The person was a burglar & car thief from about 400km away.
Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach
Now I hear of a police district forming a crime prevention unit which goes in after a crime & looks at what else they can gleam from it. From the information provided it didn't prevent crime but just discovered evidence of more past crime.
Wait a minute isn't that what detectives did in the past? Isn't crime prevention what the officer on the beat did by patrolling?
All these fancy names & sectioning off areas of specialty are really the reason crime is now out of control. Not enough officers on the ground doing the actual policing & having a presence really acted as crime prevention.
Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International)
We have more people in the police but it seems less doing the actual policing. Starting to sound like the US army with so many specialists there were very few actual grunts. Boots on the ground in the end is what wins wars of all types & impacts on crime. It is also where you win the hearts & minds. Not just throwing cash at things.
The police officer in tune with his community can more often than not deal with a situation without the need to resort to the law. But with the emphasis on arrests & tickets & now building all these special units it would seem the art of policing is slowly been lost. That is what I am also hearing from experienced & former police officers.
Again definitely use these new techniques or technology but in conjunction with what really works!
Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
Sometimes doing things that seem to be the hard way work out better in the long run. In the army we had a saying "Train Hard fight easy" & through walking the beat, getting to know your community might be hard work at first for a police officer I think it would have rewards in the long run.
It did in the past from anecdotal evidence.
http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz
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