In this assignment, you will develop questions and then interview a professional law enforcement officer about his or her perceptions of, and experiences with, intelligence-led policing. It is preferable to interview an officer in the same jurisdictional area as the two interviews you conducted for the Unit 4 assignment. This would enable you to successfully develop your strategic intelligence plan for your final paper as well as complete this assignment.

The purpose of this assignment is to investigate the practices and procedures of intelligence work from the perspective of someone with personal experience in the system. By learning first-hand about the important concerns and experiences of professionals in the field, you will see how it is, from the insider’s view, to work with intelligence in complex organizational and community structures. You will learn how your respondent deals with the challenges, stressors, opportunities, and needs for effective, legally-framed, professionally ethical, and personally moral approaches to intelligence collection, analysis, and application.

Make sure that your approach demonstrates full respect for the legal, professionally ethical, and personally moral rights of your professional interviewee to privacy, propriety, security, and dignity. Guarantee the confidentiality of the interview process by protecting the identity of your law enforcement interviewee. Do not reveal any information that could be used to his or her professional or personal detriment. The foundation of your interview must be to build and uphold trust so you obtain the most candid responses possible. Take a nonjudgmental, neutral, and understanding approach to the interviewee.

Focus your questions on how this professional views the tools of intelligence activities. These activities include any interactions with persons in the officer’s jurisdiction during his or her official duties. Specifically, field inquiries (commonly termed “stop and frisk”), traffic stops, observations of actions by persons, direct contacts both verbal and nonverbal—any interactions that produce information useful to the pursuit of policing services are features of intelligence work. Additionally, ask your interviewee about how tools such as statistical data, crime pattern data, CompStat, and other crime mapping methods are used on a regular basis.

Some of the questions you might ask your respondent:

Background Questions:

•How would you describe the basic functions of your agency, department, or unit?

•How would you describe your current duties and responsibilities?

•How would you describe your general background and training in relation to your work?

•How would you describe your political and social views in general?

•What values are most important to you?

•What do you think are society’s major problems?

Ask additional questions that delve into the background foundations of the interviewee’s perceptions.

Questions About Intelligence Work:

•What are some intelligence policies and practices that you feel are most beneficial and effective to law enforcement? What intelligence practices do you feel are least beneficial or effective? Can you describe an incident of each kind of experience that you have observed?

•How do you use community-related crime information provided by your agency and other community agencies and sources to organize and prioritize your enforcement duties on a regular basis?

•What are your views and experiences with regard to due process and how it has been actually implemented in the course of police work? Please describe incidents of note, both positive and negative, regarding due process.

•How do you feel about the legal rights of possible and likely offenders? How do you understand, perceive, and manage the human and civil rights of possible and likely offenders?

•What are some crime patterns and trends that you feel are most encouraging and why do you feel positive about these trends? What crime patterns and trends do you feel are most disturbing and even most threatening to public safety in the community you serve?

•How effective is the intelligence work you and other persons and agencies are doing in promoting public safety? What tools do you feel could most enhance the effectiveness of your work?

•How does the special knowledge of your jurisdiction that you and others in your agency develop help to reduce crime? What tools of your profession do you feel are most useful in helping to predict and prevent crime incidents?

•What changes in intelligence operations or procedures would you like to see implemented in your agency?

Ask additional questions that delve into the perceptions of the interviewee regarding intelligence-led policing.

Instructions for Writing Your Paper:

•Analyze the police professional’s perspective of intelligence activities in relation to his or her training, background, roles, and other factors expressed in the interview.

•Assess and evaluate the usefulness and benefits of the practices and policies discussed by your interviewee. In what ways do you think these practices and policies are effective, legal, professionally ethical, personally moral, and broadly humane? Do you feel the practices advocated by the professional tend to build rapport, trust, and collaboration with the community?

•Assess and evaluate the trends and directions of the intelligence practices and policies discussed by your interviewee. Discuss how the professional uses a variety of community intelligence sources to accomplish his or her daily work. To what degree do you feel these trends, activities, and sources are useful and beneficial?

•Assess the impact of your respondent’s perceptions of intelligence work on gaining community support for policing. Do you think this kind of professional perspective, based on reliable intelligence, guides effective policing operations?

•Offer suggestions in your paper (but not to the interviewee) on how to enhance the intelligence function described by the professional by improving the quality, effectiveness, legality, morality, ethicality, and humanity of police intelligence activities.