Crime and Intelligence Analysis

An Integrated Real-Time Approach

Glenn Grana, James Windell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138435766, 9781138435766
• eBook ISBN: 9781315351247
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Law

Crime and Intelligence Analysis: An Integrated Real-Time Approach covers everything crime analysts and tactical analysts need to know to be successful. Providing an overview of the criminal justice system as well as the more fundamental areas of crime analysis, the book will enable students and law enforcement personnel to better understand criminal behavior, learn the basics of conducting temporal analysis of crime patterns, use spatial analysis to better understand crime, apply research methods to crime analysis, and more successfully evaluate data and information to help predict criminal offending and solve criminal cases. Criminal justice and police academy students will learn how to be skilled and credible crime analysts who play a critical role in the daily operations of law enforcement.

PART I

CRIME AND THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

1

THE CRIME PROBLEM

Chapter Outline

1. The crime problem

2. Who is concerned about crime?

3. Who benefits from the United States having a crime problem?

4. Who really wants to see crime reduced or eliminated?

5. Technology and crime

6. This book and the crime problem

Learning Objectives for Chapter 1

1. Become familiar with the crime problem

2. Understand who is concerned about crime and why

3. Discuss the perceptions and goals of the major players in the criminal justice system

4. Better understand law enforcement approaches to the crime problem

5. Become familiar with concepts and approaches found in this book

6. Learn about intelligence, crime analysis, the crime analysis triangle, and the scanning, analysis, response, and assessment (SARA) analysis model

An elementary school with hundreds of young children is placed on lockdown because a dangerous-sounding man has phoned violent threats to the school office. Immediately, as vague details are posted on social media, parents and other citizens in the school district are suddenly fearful of what could happen. This worst-case scenario recently occurred at an elementary school in Rochester, New York.

With the clock ticking, and the elusive suspect’s threatening phone calls increasing, with details of his threats unnerving law enforcement, a profile needed to be established to identify the who, what, where, and why of this potential deadly scenario. But who is responsible to piece together the investigative puzzle?

Clearly, aggressive real-time data mining and rapid dissemination of intelligence is critical to assist the police as the case continues to unfold. The answer, as you will learn in this book, is that it is the tactical crime analyst who is responsible for providing enough information for a disaster to be averted.

In law enforcement, success can be measured in many different ways. Often, and particularly in this elementary school crisis, success may be measured simply in terms of the number of lives saved. Thanks to the tactical crime analyst working this case in the Rochester, New York, real-time crime center, the crisis was successfully resolved—and hundreds of young lives were saved.

But how the tactical crime analyst accomplished this success was entirely dependent on the process that analyst followed.

As a crime analyst, the success you have on your job rests entirely on the process that you follow. The most critical stage in this process is the analytical stage—the stage in which intelligence is gathered. Then, that intelligence is disseminated to law enforcement. But in this case only priority intelligence was relayed to the police, who in turned transmitted that intelligence to officers at the scene.

Analysis has always played a pivotal role in the success of crisis management incidents. Even as critical pieces of information are discovered during the initial collection and verification process, what can be lost, at times, are crucial pieces of information that may lead to a better understanding of the suspect’s mindset, his or her motives, and—as happened in Rochester, New York—a peaceful resolution.

The use of a real-time crime analyst, one who can rapidly analyze information and intelligence obtained from multiple data sources while applying his or her understanding of the theories and practices that law enforcement practitioners are trained in, can help to create a unique analytical process. The process that you will learn about in this book will help to establish—and solidify—the credibility and importance of the tactical crime analyst working in a real-time crime environment.

But before tactical crime analysts can contribute to these types of dynamic investigations, they need to be able to draw upon training and experience in order to assist them with their critical need for understanding of the investigative process, the intelligence examination process, and the analytical process, which is required to work effectively and proficiently, in real time, with their law enforcement partners.

This first chapter begins this process by introducing you to the fundamentals of understanding the crime problem and the technological aspects involved with combining the process of criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, and crime analysis. It will also introduce you to how the role of the traditional crime analyst is evolving into a dynamic hybrid role of the real-time tactical analyst—the person who incorporates all of the aforementioned skill sets while working crime in a real-time setting.

Michael Brown, an African American, was 18 when he was shot to death by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old Caucasian, on August 9, 2014. There were disputed circumstances in this shooting incident that resulted in nationwide protests and civil unrest in the small town of Ferguson. The incident sparked vigorous debate about how the police deal with African American suspects. A grand jury failed to indict Officer Wilson, and he was not charged with a crime.

Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old woman, stood on the front porch of a home in suburban Detroit in the early morning hours of November 2, 2013. The homeowner, a 55-year-old airport maintenance worker named Theodore Wafer, opened the inside front door and fired a single shotgun blast that killed Ms. McBride. Several months later, after a trial, a jury convicted Mr. Wafer, a Caucasian, of murder, and he was sentenced to at least 17 years in prison for killing the unarmed woman, who was African American.

At the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded at 2:49 p.m. as runners were racing toward the finish line. Three people were killed and 264 were injured. The suspects were identified within three days as Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. After the suspects killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman and carjacked an SUV, there was an exchange of gunfire with the police and Tamerlan, shot several times, was killed. Several hours later, Dzhokhar was captured. He went on trial in 2015, was found guilty of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and the malicious destruction of property resulting in death, and was sentenced to be executed.

On January 27, 2014, Matthew Smith, age 31, of Mohave Valley, Arizona, was sentenced by a U.S. district judge to 35 years in prison for the second-degree murder, child abuse, and assault of two of his stepchildren. The assaults and murder occurred on the Fort Mohave Indian reservation.

Jeremiah Mazoli was charged in Eugene, Oregon, with the theft of two laptop computers and a guitar from a fraternity on the campus of the University of Oregon. He pled guilty to second-degree burglary.

Introduction

All of five of these incidents are real. You may have heard about one or more of them, but probably not all five. Crime happens every day in this country. Some of it is relatively minor, such as the laptop computer and guitar thefts in Eugene, Oregon. Some of it is major, such as the shooting deaths of Renisha McBride and Michael Brown, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the abuse and murder of children in Mohave Valley, Arizona.

Because we see and hear about crimes on televised news shows and read about them in our daily newspapers, we are all very much aware that crime exists. But you may have been the victim of a crime yourself, or you may know someone who has been a crime victim. And while you may be fortunate to simply have heard about what has happened to other people, you may still be very concerned about crime. You may even have voiced your opinion—in a conversation or on your own blog—about the “crime problem” in the United States.

In Chapter 2, we will discuss how much crime actually occurs in this country, but in this chapter, we address this fundamental question: is there a crime problem in this country?

Is There a Crime Problem in the United States?

This is a question that can be viewed from any one of several perspectives.

First, let’s start by quoting President Lyndon B. Johnson’s opening remarks from his address to a meeting with a group of U.S. governors on the problems of crime and law enforcement:

The fact of crime and the fear of crime are common across our land. For it has an unrelenting pace. It exacts heavy costs in human suffering and in financial losses to both individuals and communities. It blocks the achievement of a good life for all our people.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1966)

It was President Johnson who appointed the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1965 to study the American criminal justice system. Johnson assigned the group a task that was viewed then as a staggering challenge of fighting crime and repairing the American criminal justice system. The commission’s final report was issued in 1967 and has been described as “the most comprehensive evaluation of crime and crime control in the United States at the time.” It laid out reorganization plans for police departments and suggested a range of reforms. In the introduction to this report, the U.S. attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, wrote, “The existence of crime, the talk about crime, the reports of crime, and the fear of crime have eroded the basic quality of life of most Americans” (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement, 2005).

That was the perspective of the president and the attorney general in the 1960s. It is evident that they were very concerned about the crime problem. President Obama and his first attorney general, Eric Holder, also indicated, about a half-century later, their own concerns about crime and the criminal justice system. In August 2013, the U.S. attorney general introduced the “Smart on Crime” initiative—a package of reforms to the criminal justice system to help ensure that federal laws are enforced more fairly and more efficiently. Among other reforms, the effort promotes diversion courts and other alternatives to incarceration for low-level drug offenders, and urges investment in reentry programs in order to reduce recidivism among formerly incarcerated individuals. President Obama has expressed on several occasions concerns about drug addiction and its relationship to the cycle of crime. Drugs and crime are often linked, President Obama has said, and this is why addressing serious drug-related crime and violence will always be a vital component of the president’s and the attorney general’s plan to protect public health and safety in America.

Instead of talking about the crime problem, the Obama administration made frequent references to the “drug problem.” The Obama administration has made it clear that we cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem, but rather the focus should be on a drug policy that emphasizes the expansion of innovative Smart on Crime strategies proven to help break the cycle of drug use, crime, arrest, and incarceration (National Drug Control Policy, 2014).

However, if you listen to police chiefs and city officials, they have a somewhat different perspective. For instance, in Detroit, the Detroit Police Department reports that violent crimes saw significant drops in 2014, mirroring the decline in homicides, which likely fell to the lowest total in the city since 1967. Robbery had the sharpest decline, dropping from 2836 in 2013 to 1879 in 2014—representing a 34% drop. Carjacking, a subset of robbery, also saw a large drop, from 765 to 525, a 32% decline. However, Detroit police chief James Craig had this to say: “Robberies and carjackings—those are the crimes that strike fear into most citizens” (Hunter, 2015).

In New York City, the crime problem is not seen the same way as it is in Detroit. “The City has made incredible strides in reducing crime in the past few decades,” said New York City council member Corey Johnson, chair of the Health Committee. “However, there is much work to be done” (Press Office: City of New York, 2014).

In New Orleans, Louisiana, it’s a favorite talking point of Mayor Mitch Landrieu and New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) superintendent Ronal Serpas when they’re discussing crime in the Crescent City to say that, yes, New Orleans is the nation’s murder capital, but other than that, it’s a reasonably safe place.

Landrieu and Serpas say that New Orleans is significantly less dangerous than Orlando, Florida, perhaps America’s most popular family destination. Orlando had a 35% higher violent crime rate than New Orleans in 2011, the last year ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I CRIME AND THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
• PART II LAW ENFORCEMENT—THEN AND NOW
• PART III INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS
• PART IV CRIME ANALYSIS
• PART V CRIME ANALYSIS AND THE FUTURE
• INDEX