Intelligence-led Policing - United States

United States

The post-9/11 environment in the US, the "era of Homeland Security" for American policing, has increased demands for law enforcement to build global partnerships and to work more closely with local agencies to expand the capacity of the state to fight both crime and terrorism. Given the belief that 9/11 and other terrorist attacks could have been prevented if not for intelligence failures, a key difference with intelligence-led policing from earlier strategies is that intelligence is no longer considered a specialized function for crime analysts or intelligence units.

Investigations following bombings of the rail systems in Madrid and London and the arrest of suspected terrorists in Canada, Britain, and Florida suggested that intelligence culled from a variety of sources and through strengthened inter-agency cooperation may be the key to identifying suspects and successfully intervening to prevent attacks.

On March 16, 2005, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff outlined a risk-based approach to homeland security threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences when he said,

"Risk management must guide our decision-making as we examine how we can best organize to prevent, respond, and recover from an attack . . . . Our strategy is, in essence, to manage risk in terms of these three variables – threat, vulnerability, consequence. We seek to prioritize according to these variables, to fashion a series of preventive and protective steps that increase security at multiple levels."

In 2006 Mark Riebling of the Center for Policing Terrorism published a doctrine on Intelligence-Led Policing. Riebling's model leverages both Israeli counter-terrorist tactics, and the NYPD's Broken Windows policing theories. Among the Broken-Windows mechanisms, Riebling's doctrine blends problem solving, environmental design, community policing, and public-private partnerships. Analyzing the operations of the Israeli National Police in Tel Aviv, Riebling notes approvingly that "investigation of the incident, even a traffic accident, is secondary to the number one goal—which is gathering intelligence. "For instance, when they raided a bordello, where the patrons were primarily Arabs from different parts of the region, Israeli police were less concerned about the criminal activity, than with preparing intelligence reports on who these people were, and how they got into Israel."

In its current conceptualization, intelligence-led policing is envisioned as a tool for information sharing both within law enforcement agencies and between all participants in the community, private sector, intelligence community, and public government. The concept aids law enforcement agencies in identifying threats and developing responses to prevent those threats from reaching fruition in America’s communities. There is no universally accepted definition of ILP, although the components of most definitions are the same or at least similar. Carter and Carter (2009) propose an operational definition of ILP: The collection and analysis of information related to crime and conditions that contribute to crime, resulting in an actionable intelligence product intended to aid law enforcement in developing tactical responses to threats and/or strategic planning related to emerging or changing threats.

While Carter and Carter (2009) argue the British experience with ILP has provided an important foundation for U.S. initiatives, they note that there are "important differences in legacy and functional responsibilities that limit the wholesale adoption of the British model in the United States. Among those limitations has been the array of post-9/11 federal standards for the American law enforcement intelligence process, including the new dimension of homeland security intelligence. Although the implementation of ILP is expected to be a challenge for most U.S. law enforcement agencies, Carter and Carter (2009) argue that the experiences and foundation of CompStat and community policing serve as important springboards for success. Although there are substantive differences in the concepts, the similarities serve as reliable policy experiences to make implementation of ILP a functional reality" (p. 322)