Answer each of the following questions in your initial response:

1. What is the benefit of accurate report writing in law enforcement intelligence operations insofar as having an influence in operational decisions.

2. What intelligence value is gained by a police department that provides street officers with training in collecting and documenting information they receive on the streets while working their assigned sectors or beats?

3. In a perfect world of information sharing, can law enforcement prevent or reduce crime using actionable intelligence? Actionable intelligence is “intelligence that can be acted upon” at the tactical level.

Objective:

Instructions: You must utilize APA 6th edition format in your response. Additionally you need to include at least one (1) referenced source. All forum responses need to be 500 words and include two (2) substantive feedback posts to your peers of 250 words.

Student Responses

Student #1 Leisa

1. This is a very important step in law enforcement and that is because many of these reports are used in court and also to incriminate people. If not all of the information is provided in these types of reports then it could falsely classify an event and operationally, completely throw off investigations. This is also because in investigations that take place later that might involve the same person, if notes are not properly made then there could be major errors in investigating. Therefore, operational decisions of how to investigate could also get thrown off especially when profiling is taking place. Something I have heard cops say time and time again is that writing reports is one of the harder parts to their job, especially being that it takes a lot of time, but it is so very important.
2. There is so much importance to this and if every police department did this, it would greatly boost the department and also increase efficiency. Police work keeps everyone safe and if the officers are not truly observing and documenting the important things (meaning if they don’t know what to look for, they won’t document it) then there could be large gaps in understanding what happened and further, there could be issues in charging someone. Further, sometimes people like to sue police departments, but if there is plenty of evidence written within the police report at the time of the incident, then it also could provide protection for the department and for the officer. When investigations start to take place, it is important to have all of the details. Information intelligence and literacy is something that everyone must have in this day and age, but for cops, it takes it a little bit further in knowing the pertinent information versus the non-pertinent information and then helps them in creating a report when they have been taught this. Really, this should be a part of every single police training, because we are not born knowing how to properly report information when a call takes place.
3. Actionable intelligence can be incredibly useful! This type of intelligence is used regularly in preventing terrorism and is more commonly seen in unified units but is definitely implemented and encouraged on a precinct level aside from a unified precinct. I would like to use the lesson for this week was an example which covered arson. According to the lesson for this week investigative tactics to be able to monitor and try and prevent acts of arson is something that police departments are aptly trying to strategize (APUS, n.d.). Considering this information, they are using many different tactics to be able to prevent the crime of arson. In some cases, that can utilize actionable intelligence to be able to act and react, through strategizing. Actionable intelligence is another important type of recording and reporting. When making decisions of how to handle a problem, actionable intelligence greatly helps with the ease of transferring information and so on.

As a question to my peers, being that technology is ever changing, where do you see things like reporting and actionable intelligence going in law enforcement? Of course, I would think that they would improve, but with the information we learned this week, how could this all apply to something non-physical like cyber crimes for example?

Thanks for reading,

Leisa

References –

APUS. “Week 5 Lesson.” American Public University Systems. https://edge.apus.edu/portal/site/393641/tool/499f…

Student #2 Steven

Happy New Year class,

This week we are to answer these three questions:

1. What is the benefit of accurate report writing in law enforcement intelligence operations insofar as having an influence in operational decisions? When it comes to transparency and accuracy in law enforcement, if reporting is not accurate, then the very police we pay to employ are doing a huge disservice to the communities. This is a great question because there are probably more than 50% of crimes that goes unreported. If a police department is known for predominately using intelligence-led tactics for patrolling and the intelligence is not accurate, there would be an issue with their integrity. Therefore, if law enforcement can keep up with the evolution of crime, we will possible see a benefit in the intelligence-led policing.

2. What intelligence value is gained by a police department that provides street officers with training in collecting and documenting information they receive on the streets while working their assigned sectors or beats? The value of the intelligence gained when a police department provides its officers with the necessary training in collecting and documenting information would alone be enough to better shape police patrol work. This may not be everything needed to prevent crimes, but there could be a slim reduction in crimes until the next criminal masterplan is created. The problem with the information police gain today from street patrols does not go through the correct channels of intelligence sharing. It would also be of great help if intelligence that is gained from patrols not to be forced from small fish. In the police world bully tactics are used and helps to further enlarge the gap in relations with communities.

3. In a perfect world of information sharing, can law enforcement prevent or reduce crime using actionable intelligence? Actionable intelligence is “intelligence that can be acted upon” at the tactical level. Even in a perfect world of intelligence used in crime fighting, it is still not possible to prevent crimes using actionable intelligence. We have already witnessed that law enforcement has been incapable of keeping up with the ever-evolving world. To believe that law enforcement would be capable of even reducing crime would be a stretch. In the world live in criminals are constantly evolving and crime stoppers have tried to keep up, but to no avail. It is possible for criminals these days to commit crimes and cover up the majority of evidence that it will trace back to them for an arrest. In this week’s lesson, there was mention of how evidence in arson fires are easily destroyed in the fire[1]. Because of the lack of evidence that can be used in an arson case, it is said that insurance companies only pursue a mere 10% of arson cases and only winning 20% percent of the time[2]. Reduction on the other hand would be the work of other variables taking place. Crime is not committed or reduced because police work becomes more efficient, it is when community residents have better opportunities at quality of life resources.

[1] APUS. “Week 5 Lesson.” American Public University Systems. https://edge.apus.edu/portal/site/393641/tool/499f…

[2] APUS. “Week 5 Lesson.” American Public University Systems. https://edge.apus.edu/portal/site/393641/tool/499f…