Intelligence-Led Policing
"I want to place a ring of steel around West Yorkshire" said Inspector James Thornton to the Programme Board of the West Yorkshire Police Authority.
The Programme Board is the senior strategic body of the police authority and was chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable. Members included the two Assistant Chief Constables; one responsible for all tactical operations and the other responsible for all infrastructure policy. The Heads of all major departments were represented by their Superintendents or Chief Superintendents. James Thornton was generally regarded as a high-flyer who had made mincemeat of his inspector examinations and achieved a first-class honours degree in criminology at Leeds University and a Masters degree in counter-terrorism from St.Andrews University in Fife, the oldest education establishment in Scotland founded in 1413. James was 34 years old, married with two children, a boy and a girl and he specialised in unusual transformation projects that some regarded as deeply and thoughtfully conceived. Everyone listened when James spoke not just out of good manners but because they were genuinely interested, intrigued by the elegantly proposed changes to business processes which would meld a new, efficient way of delivering modern policing to citizens who demanded the best offrom their police force.
"I want to slash crimes, like burglary, at a stroke, deliver costed reductions and to show that intelligence-led policing is a real, not a theoretical, tool in making our citizens feel safer. In order to do so, I shall require a budget of fifty thousand pounds to have a business analyst write the business case and I assume that the total project cost will be in the region of two and a half to three million pounds." He sat back waiting for questions which he knew would come.
"Inspector Thornton, could you please outline your project to the Board?" asked Deputy Chief Constable Paul Howard.
"Yes sir" he replied. "The essence is three-fold as follows:
- I want to take back control of our roads.
- I want to take back control of our streets.
- I want to use technology to provide the evidence for the arrest and conviction of those criminals we already know about.
"That sir, is the outline of this project."
The Deputy Chief Constable was, as usual, impressed by his Inspector's clarity of thought, precision of presentation and relevance of his suggestions. He said "would you please explain a little of how you will deliver these outcomes?"
James Thornton thought for a while and then said "Well sir, it really is straightforward when one thinks about it. I propose to take back control of our roads by the use of ANPR." He looked around at the sea of blank expressions and continued "ANPR or Automated Number-Plate Recognition, is the technology by which specialised cameras can capture car number plates travelling along a road and the ANPR software is able to translate these images into actual data which can look up the insurance databases, the vehicle registration database in Swansea and the records held in the Police National Computer within seconds. It tells us who owns the vehicles, whether or not they should be driving them and if they have previous or current criminal convictions."
"Yes, I've heard of this technology. It is the one used by the Congestion Charging Authority in London, isn't it?" asked Chief Superintendent Paul Mason, James' boss.
"Yes sir, it is but there is an important difference to what I propose" replied James. "The Congestion-Charging Authority can only read the number plates if the cars are travelling at no more than eight miles per hour. That's why there are so many bollards and traffic-calming obstacles around those cameras. I propose that we employ technology that will read car number plates at speeds up to 120 miles per hour. That way, we can monitor all traffic on our roads, even our motorways. I propose putting a ring of these cameras on all approach roads into our county with the cameras storing a new image every tenth of a second."
"But that would take a lot of bodies to sit at the monitors looking out for criminals" said Paul Mason, with a puzzled expression.
"I disagree, sir. I just propose that the technology stores away the data. We humans do not need to be involved in it."
"But how is the technology going to help us?" asked Superintendent Peter Hopkins, who headed up the Command and Control function of the police force.
James beamed as he said "This really leads us onto Intelligence-led policing, doesn't it?" He looked around at a sea of blank faces. He continued. "Look, we know who the top twenty criminals are within our force area, don't we?" Several people nodded and James continued "and we've known who they are for years haven't we?" They nodded again and one was heard to say "They are the same crime families as in my father's time and he's been retired for twenty years." James smiled as he asked "well, why don't we arrest them and lock them up?"
There was a silence for a while until someone said "we can't do this because we don't have the evidence to support the arrest. We know where they are, what they do, when they do it but they're clever and they have associates who see us coming and warn them to scarper. But I don't see how this technology is going to change things."
"That's just the point" said James. "The ANPR cameras will be our eyes. They will be on every major road and they will work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They will never make a mistake, need to eat or go to the toilet but will tirelessly record all cars travelling along our roads."
"I still don't see how it will help" said Chief Super Paul Mason.
"Think about it, sir. We know who the criminals are. We know which vehicles they use. We know where they perform their thievery. We know they don't work at night. We know they don't work when it's cold and we know which crime families thieve the most. So, I propose that we target the most virulent of these families and we ask the ANPR database when and where the cameras have seen their cars on our roads. The technology will tell us about the patterns of sightings at the recorded times so that we can, for example, ascertain that crime family X travels to its target for thievery every Friday at nine in the morning and returns along the main A1 trunk road south at 4pm that same day. The PNC will tell us about their known associates and whether or not they favour guns. All we need to do is to set up a road block on the A1 on a Friday at 3.45pm with the Firearms Support Unit in attendance and, bingo, we will catch them all, in a convoy, with their ill-gotten gains. It's really very simple" said James.
"But that's incredible!" exclaimed Paul Mason. "It's a stroke of genius. But will the evidence stack up James?" he asked.
"Well sir. It should do. After all we've caught them making their getaway but, even if I'm wrong, the arrest and trial will keep them off the road and away from crime for at least three months, which means three months free of their thievery. We can even cost it for our monthly and yearly statistics. Even if we do not know precisely how much they steal every month, we will have the stolen contents in their cars when we arrest them. We can cost that. We will know from the ANPR cameras how many times a month they travel to their targets for theft and we can multiply the frequency of theft by the value of the seized goods, giving us a monthly total. We can then accurately say that our ANPR operation has saved so many millions of pounds worth of illegal goods."
Everyone seemed to be delighted by the idea and James continued:
"Well that was the operation concerning crime family X. As we know there are another nineteen or twenty such families and I propose that we tackle them in the same way in order of the value of the goods they steal or drugs they supply. If we do it in a 'round robin' way, then when we've targeted the twentieth family, we start on crime family X again. The technology will never go out of fashion."
"Impressive James, most impressive" said Deputy Chief Constable Paul Howard.
"That's only the beginning, sir" replied James. "I want to do the same for people on foot. I want to link in all of the CCTV cameras used by the Local Authorities, so that we can see anyone up to no good in our cities. Now, we can't just type in a simple search but we can know where and when in a town or city an incident has happened. We can therefore search the camera records in real time and give specific information to Command and Control concerning where the criminals are or where they went. If they get into a car, we have them nailed by the ANPR technology. We should be able to bring down our response time to a crime from twenty minutes to just over five and I predict that our arrest and conviction rates should triple. The best thing about the project is that we only need one intelligence analyst to interrogate the technology; that's a revenue cost increase of about twenty-five thousand pounds a year, with a crime-reduction value of at least fifty million pounds. That, gentlemen, I would suggest is a result." He sat back contented.
Inspector Glen Williams was known to be a man of few words and, in his world, this was a quality that was useful. He was in charge of the force's Special Branch and, as such, he dealt with secret things. Most people do not understand why police forces have a Special Branch department. They think that the Security Service, better known as MI5, looks after all matters concerning the security of the UK. They do not understand that MI5 has no executive powers, that is it cannot arrest anyone. It has to call in the police; well that part of the police force that deals with the secrets of the realm and that part is called Special Branch. It has two main areas of interest which are terrorism and NIM level 3 crime which is crime perpetrated by foreign gangs or by a domestic gang with the involvement of foreign criminals. All of its members are cleared to DV level, this enables them to handle Top Secret matters on a daily basis and, so it was that Glen Williams, the Force's top spook, asked his question.
"James, would I be right in thinking that we could use this technology to profile persons of national or international interest?"
"If they use vehicles or travel on foot within our towns or cities" replied James. He continued "why do you ask?"
"It seems to me that you defined certain criteria for your data that we use when producing a problem, or person, profile. For example, we have certain persons of interest who live in a certain part of Bradford. As you would expect, we keep a regular surveillance on them but we are constrained by manpower, the same as every other police department. Now, it seems to me that it would be very helpful if we had technology profiling the cars of these people and their known or unknown associates. I feel, but cannot confirm, that these persons of interest are creatures of habit just like your crime families. They must travel at certain times to specific people for specific reasons. Now, if we had these patterns of behaviour, we could target our resources much more efficiently."
James nodded and asked "But how do you get on at present?"
"Mainly mobile phone intercepts from Echelon at Menwith Hill and careless talk in pubs. It's surprising how many people are listening to you in your Local."
"But Muslims don't drink alcohol Glenn."
"I know, James, but their associates do and anyway these potential terrorists are fully targeted by phone intercepts. They are positively profiled no matter what the Labour Party would like us to do." Glenn paused and said "you see, like you, we need evidence before we can arrest or detain these terrorists even though we know who they are and that they are up to no good."
James enthusiastically said "Yes, I reckon we can do that, Glenn."
"You'd need to give us a secure line; we don't share information for any reason."
"Well, Glenn, you could mine our normal information, using the standard software, but the results could be sent to you over secure Norton technology. The extra cost would be minimal."
The Deputy Chief Constable, seeing that all questions had been asked, said "Well ladies and gentlemen, I propose those in favour to grant fifty thousand pounds to Inspector Thornton say 'yes.' Those against? I declare this motion to be carried. Well done, James. Keep up the good work.
Inspector James Thornton sat back contentedly.
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