Your understanding of the concept of "intelligence" in policing depends on your perspective. This fact becomes a real problem as we move toward an intelligence-led police approach. What is intelligence anyway? Is there any definitive answer? Maybe we can start moving toward consensus by looking at the elephant.
To illustrate how intelligence is like an elephant, let's look at a well-known old Indian fable. Six blind men encounter an elephant. The first blind man touches the elephant's leg, and he says an elephant is like a pillar. The second blind man touches the elephant's tail, and he says, no, an elephant is like a rope. The third blind man touches the elephant's trunk, and he says you're both crazy; an elephant is just like a tree branch. The fourth blind man touches the elephant's ear, and says he is certain that an elephant is like a hand held fan. The fifth man touches the elephant's belly, and he insists that an elephant is like a wall. The sixth man touches the elephant's tusk, and he says, you are all wrong an elephant is like a solid pipe!
The men were arguing about the elephant when a sighted man came along and asked them what was wrong. After they each told him what the elephant was like, he said, "You're all correct! An elephant has all the features you describe."
It's the same problem with intelligence in policing and in other realms where intelligence is defined and used, including the United States intelligence community, the military, and the business world. Intelligence is defined by your exposure to its use.
If are working in local level policing, traditionally intelligence has been that protected information gathered from informants and surveillance. If you're an intelligence analyst in a large police department, you might add to the intelligence definition financial analysis, association charts and telephone toll analysis to help officers find out the relationships between criminals and their activities.
If you work in the United Kingdom and have put the National Intelligence Model (NIM) into place, you add to your definition of intelligence what is usually called "crime analysis" in the United States. You consider using crime maps, crime pattern analysis, and problem analysis to be part of intelligence. In theory, under the NIM, all information that is analyzed to help police decision-makers is intelligence.
If you work for Homeland Security, you consider information on potential terrorists to be intelligence. You add in information about the critical infrastructure, biological and chemical hazards and any other data related to your mission.
If you've had negative public outcry in your community about past intelligence gathering activities, you probably avoid thinking about intelligence altogether because it equals trouble. Your personal concerns about Big Brother might make you distrust the whole concept.
The intelligence you get often depends on who you employ. If you have analysts in your agency who are strong in geographic information systems (GIS), you get lots of maps. If your agency has invested money in a tool such as i2's Analyst's Notebook, you get link charts. If your analysts are psychology majors, you will get profiling.
If you work in the U.S. intelligence community (IC), intelligence is focused on foreign threats to our nation. According to Executive Order 12333:
"The United States intelligence effort shall provide the President and the National Security Council with the necessary information on which to base decisions concerning the conduct and development of foreign, defense and economic policy, and the protection of United States national interests from foreign security threats."
Some of the threats identified by the IC are threats that are also addressed by every level of policing in the United States, specifically the threat of terrorism and the results of narcotics trafficking. As first responders, local level policing also must be concerned with preparedness for biological and chemical threats, threats primarily addressed by the IC.
According to Wikipedia, military intelligence "is a military discipline which informs the commanders' decision making process by providing analysis of available data from a wide range of sources and forecasting of environmental changes and opposing force intentions."
The military and the IC prioritize intelligence analysis and share a language for a variety of different types of intelligence. Most of these types translate into aspects of law enforcement intelligence. A few of them include HUMINT (human intelligence), COMINT (communications intelligence), and OSINT (open source intelligence). Using informants and interrogation is a HUMINT activity. Wiretaps and telephone analysis are COMINT. Using the telephone book and looking at public records in the course of an investigation are OSINT.
At the web site of the Society of Competitive Intelligence (SCIP), competitive intelligence (CI) is defined as "a necessary, ethical business discipline for decision making based on understanding the competitive environment." SCIP reports that one of the reasons CI is important is that in a fast changing global economy "executives can no longer afford to rely on instinct or intuition when making strategic business decisions."
Policing has long relied on instinct and intuition rather than studying the environment in the context of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. What is the necessary information for police decision-making if we move beyond instinct and intuition? Do we know? No doubt we want to keep the valuable components of intuition and instinct based on street experience and street smarts. However, the use information from of wide variety of sources, analyzed so that actionable intelligence is provided to decision-makers benefits us all. The ability to forecast the impacts of environmental changes and the intentions of our opposition (the law-breakers) are essential to intelligence led policing. We need true intelligence.
So, what does intelligence mean to you, the average police officer, police manager, police leader? What part of the elephant are you touching?
If your agency is COMPSTAT-focused, you are using measurements as your primary intelligence. Your success depends on tactical approaches to get your numbers down. If your agency is problem-oriented policing-focused, you have an uncommon strategic focus to intelligence. Yet, you may not be as effective in tactical response.
If your agency is focused on targeting the 6% of criminals who commit the 60% of crime in your community, your primary intelligence focus is on surveillance, informants, decoys, busts, and clandestine activities directed in apprehending the culprits.
If you have a broad understanding of intelligence, the elephant view, your focus will be global and holistic. You will demand to know everything you need to know about your community and the surrounding communities, including the crime and disorder activities, the potential threats, and the emerging trends.
Only then, like a military leader, can you make the best decisions possible to obtain and deploy resources for your mission to reduce crime and improve public safety. You will invest in both crime analysis and intelligence analysis and not keep them separate. No more silos. You will promote a culture of information sharing and cooperative problem identification and problem solving. You will study what worked in the pat and improve on it. You will know your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your employees, your community, your citizens, and your criminals.
Intelligence led policing is dependent on a language in which "intelligence" is broadly defined and transcends partial definitions. Let's look at the whole intelligence elephant and appreciate what it can do. It's the real thing.
