Law Enforcement Intelligence Paper

Throughout its more than hundred year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has been a very important agency to the United States. As a threat-based and intelligence-driven national security organization, the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership to federal, state, and international agencies (“A Brief History of the FBI”). The Bureau’s success has always depended on its agility, its willingness to adapt, and the ongoing dedication of its personnel. But in the years since

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one, centralized agency, securing the homeland involves the cooperation and collaboration of many, different agencies and organizations ranging from local law enforcement to national agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Each of these agencies contributes to the development of homeland security intelligence. By carefully analyzing and commenting on the objectives, tasks, strengths, weaknesses, and roles of each agency, a larger picture emerges regarding the capabilities and limitation of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts.

Homeland Security is characterized by crime control being the primary police function. It is best achieved through a collective effort by all law enforcement agencies. One of the strategies being used is Intelligence Led Policing. This strategy is not new, it can be traced back to the British is the 1990’s (Bailey, 2011). Intelligence Led Policing is an approach to crime that deals with all crimes and threats including terrorism. This approach is unique because it is threat driven instead of incident driven. It also is a long term approach and focuses on causes and conditions that add to crime through a collection of data.

The DNI has modestly more power than the old Directors of Central Intelligence (DCIs), but not enough to give the ODNI/AIS real clout. “Herding cats” remains a decent description of the ODNI’s basic role. The DNI has several duties and responsibilities, but for the subject of improving intelligence information sharing the focus will be directed towards: Improving Analytics, Improving Information Security, Improving Foreign Liaison Relationships, and the end state of Improving Information Sharing.

Emphasis on teamwork is a very important element in organizational behavior in the criminal justice or security agency. Many criminal organization are starting to work together to goal of making a huge profit in illegal activity, which is making it difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate and investigate a criminal organization because most of the criminal organization have knowledge of law enforcement personnel around their local area. Law enforcement agencies have teamed up and used other undercover officer from different local, state, and federal agencies to infiltrate and investigate illegal activity by criminal organizations. The United States may also team with agencies on an international level to help combat international criminal organization, in an effort to stop terrorism, drugs, human trafficking, and etc.

Since 2010, integration has been the vanguard initiative of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). This initiative has been successful in several areas to include: the creation of National Intelligence Managers (NIM) for all primary geographic regions and functional areas; enhanced transparency; and the focus on the negative impacts of over classifying documents. However, not all efforts to integrate the intelligence community (IC) have been successful. For instance, the ODNI did not succeed at creating a comprehensive sharing environment, and has not fully integrated federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Although, these failed areas of integration can be mitigated in the future through the appropriate initiatives taken by the ODNI.

The devastating events of 9/11 provided a forewarning to our country concerning the dangers of terrorism. However, it has created a particularly greater impact on the duties and standards expected of law enforcement agencies on all levels (local, state, and national). Law enforcement has begun implementing new tactics in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks from threatening our national security. One aspect of policing in which terrorism has brought about is the process of information sharing between all levels of law enforcement. Our nation has also witnessed a change from traditional policing to that of a militarized one. Furthermore, after the incidents of September 11th, the

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks was among the agencies that associated the 9/11 attacks with lack of coordination among agencies (Best, 2015). This prompted the Congress to enact a legislation that established a centralized intelligence leadership, popular as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). However, the legislation only helped to increase tension between different agencies, especially on how to approach funding. The legislation was not clear regarding the boundaries between the activities of the DNI, and their interaction with the mainstream intelligence agencies. The congress debated these concerns and later established the framework for the working of the DNI and relationship with different intelligence agencies. Most importantly, this legislation focused on one element of reorganization, which was enhancing coordination of activities between different

Today there is information sharing between agencies at the local and national levels; resources and staff are shared, bringing together individuals from various law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The 9/11 commission clearly identified a problem with communication between the Intelligence Community and State and Local Law Enforcement which resulted in a new edict (from the IRTPA) of Information Sharing yet clearance levels and accesses quickly became an issue in disseminating information to those with a need to know. To help bridge this gap, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed to crate the DHS by bringing 22 under its umbrella with a primary mission of protecting the homeland from terrorism (Blum, 2010). To do so, DHS’s key mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate key/related information and share it with the IC and nontraditional partners (state/local governments as well as the private sector) (Blum, 2010). Likewise,

Intelligence in this day in age is a vital component of a countries security. The newest proposal increases intelligence spending between 2 and 3 billion dollars, a total adding to nearly $35 billion. In addition to military enhancement, the FBI and other law enforcement/intelligence agencies will also be included in this proposal. A new system has been proposed by President Bush that all information be shared among all agencies. DoD, FBI, and the Department of Counterterrorist Center have drawn closer together to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to evaluate information blended from all sources associated with terrorism and to act upon those findings accordingly.

The FBI is the USIC agency that is responsible for leading the efforts in the collection of information about terrorists and other criminals within the United States (Schneider, 2015). The FBI has the capabilities to utilize confidential informants and undercover agents when it is deemed necessary to do so in order to collect information (Schneider, 2015). Moreover, the FBI has the ability of being able to work very close with their state and local law enforcement counterparts. This ability enhances the capabilities of the FBI because in some

“National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines of the home agencies, not the joint mission. The importance of integrated, all-source analysis cannot be overstated. Without it, it is not possible to “connect the dots.” No one component holds all the relevant information.” While all agencies collect information, only through joint integration can we truly paint an accurate assessment of the facts. As a reference, the report cites the Goldwater Nichols legislation of 1986, in which Operations as a whole were better envisioned though joint co-operative training. It shows the strengths of these types of events and why we must incorporate more joint intelligence to be successful.

Abstract: In this analysis, it is shown throughout the many different agencies how the intelligence cycle is interpreted. Within each of the different agencies everyone has their own way of obtaining information and different policies that they follow, within the constriction of the US constitution. The intelligence cycle states the many different steps taken to obtain intelligence from domestic to foreign information.

Intelligence collection and apprehension of criminals have occurred for many years; however, with the exception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, these actions were performed by different organizations. Nonetheless, roles and responsibilities have changed since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Intelligence-led policing and the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing program were incorporated, and fusion centers were established to help gather intelligence from different levels of the government. Although law enforcement at the local, state, and tribal levels aid in intelligence collection, it is important to ensure that intelligence gathered to protect national security and law enforcement