Law Enforcement Intelligence Critical Elements

Threat Determination Phase of the Mission

As the figure illustrates, the Threat Determination Phase is supported by the following two operational functions:

Determine the threat to the law enforcement agency's area of responsibility
Determine the threat to law enforcement personnel and operations who will be responding to the threat or subjected to the effects of the threat

Determining the Threat to the Law Enforcement Agency's Area of Responsibility

Law enforcement management must first determine if the threat is entirely within their area of responsibility. In some cases, the problem may require the combined actions of multiple agencies. In other situations, the problem may be contained totally within an agency's area of responsibility. If possible, when a problem crosses jurisdictional lines, it will be better addressed if all affected agencies are involved in the solution, and they all choose to implement the same or similar solution.

The law enforcement community may choose to not take immediate action against an identified threat for several reasons. Sometimes priorities preclude dealing with the problem immediately. In those instances, the agency may choose to monitor the problem and deal with it as time and resources allow. In other situations, the problem may be so visible or politically sensitive that the agency must curtail other planned operations or investigations and deal with the problem immediately.

In other instances, management may determine to monitor the situation, watching to see if something will develop. At that point in time, management sets the parameters as to what will cause them to revisit the situation. If the situation then meets one or more of the established parameters, management again determines if action must be taken at that time.

Determining the Threat to Law Enforcement Personnel and Operations

Management must determine the threat to law enforcement from an overall prospective. If the new criminal activity has the ability to impair or preclude law enforcement from functioning, in any way, the criminal's chances of success increase dramatically. In addition, the new criminal challenge may assist other criminal groups in the furtherance of their criminal endeavors. For these reasons, the criminal threats must be identified as soon as possible and as completely as possible.

Also, the identification of other agencies or businesses that have dealt with the same or similar challenges should be completed. Once identified, the intelligence unit should review the specific problems dealt with by each agency or business; then review the various solutions applied by each and the resulting outcome. The resulting research product should be provided to the affected law enforcement agency's managers for their review. It must be understood that the perfect solution in one community may not work in other communities.