(due to sensitivity of the law enforcement agency – names has been changed)

Introduction:

When dealing with investigations, getting as much data as possible on an individual suspect can really help to paint a clearer picture around potential criminal activity.  However, this information relating to criminals and crimes is often scattered within department’s files or databases, and may even be accessible only to a few select personnel.  To add complexity to this issue, some key information will even be located in other departments as illegal activities are never bound to one jurisdiction.  Having easy electronic access to all of this information beyond your department’s database would definitely save investigative time, so why is it so hard to get departments to share information formally?

Could a State or Regional Database be the answer?  Perhaps, but many states are already building out State-sponsored databases that tend to be slow for searches and tedious to login into.  To add, any additional databases require additional headcount or hours on existing officers to manage the system, upload data and answer queries on that data.  The solution may be in creating automated systems that gather external data behind the scenes, from multiple jurisdictions, and delivers that information directly to you the investigator.  This is a reality from a technical standpoint, and this case study documents how a set of regional analysis centers (at the state level) asked GangScope to build a solution that allowed all of the centers to share important criminal and vehicle information easily and seamlessly.  

Challenge

1. Gang-affiliated offenders often move from place to place. Chapters often carry out criminal activity in neighboring communities.  They do not necessarily respect jurisdictions nor city/county boundaries. 
2. National & regional gangs can pose threats regionally and state-wide as local chapters frequently coordinate and carry out criminal activity in concert with one another. 
3. Gang members in various chapters often maintain strong connections with other chapters in other jurisdictions through associations, and/or family relationships.
4. Many law enforcement agencies ’ intelligence and crime information is kept in a silo and available only to that agency’s personnel.   
5. Databases & general knowledge within agencies may contain a lot of useful intelligence.  However, since this information is not linked nor easily shareable, it’s difficult to search and get a comprehensive picture of a gang, person, or vehicle that could be useful in the prevention or detection of a crime. Currently, it is not possible to know that a neighboring department has valuable information. 
6. If a regional or state database is available, who will own the data and be responsible for its validity, accuracy, and quality of data? 
7. Who is ensuring that the same level of standards and qualifiers are applied throughout all the submitting agency’s information?  Is there state legislation with specific definitions that are being adhered to?
8. What information should be sharable?

Solution:

Let’s share information but let’s be cautious! 

GangScope personnel worked with both state and regional personnel to identify the pain points of sharing data and identify a plan of action, including a map out of a new solution.  This solution would allow information sharing (regionally and at a state level), yet give each independent center their own configurable instance of the GangScope database and the ability to identify what information they were open to sharing.  These sharing configurations would be customized at each center allowing for flexibility in the amount of data available.

Some of the custom-developed solutions that would not be normally in GangScope include the ability to:

• Allow an investigating center to not only see all internal information about a person or vehicle but the ability to see other partner center’s information as well.  The partner center’s information is limited (minimal identifiable data-name, aka, dob, etc) so it is easily sharable, but if needed, the investigative center can request “more information” to be temporarily “imported” into their database.    
• The temporary information from the other center is then seen and evaluated in the hopes that it proves to be usable and useful.   Some examples of this could be additional evidence of crimes in other cities, counties, and jurisdictions.    
• Information gathered from other agencies is a detailed overview of the person or vehicle but will not contain full details nor all events.  If more information is needed, communications with the source center will be needed. 
• Since the information is only shared temporarily, there isn’t a question as to the ownership of the information nor who was the originating source of the information.  This solution allows for cleaner lines of accountability and quality of information in the database.

Benefits:

This custom-developed solution helps build a bigger, clearer view of criminals across jurisdictions and city/county boundaries.  It digitally delivers, and has available, useful intelligence and information in an easy, concise view to help make better and quicker decisions.

To add, GangScope is built to help with data retention guidelines (28CFR), so that when data is housed in GangScope, it will automatically keep track of your data and ensure you stay compliant. 

Results:

GangScope assisted with data sharing, data integration, reporting and predictive analytics methods.  GangScope’s data sharing solution offers a tremendous opportunity for law enforcement agencies within a region or state to improve crime prevention through accurate, valuable, and timely information that is easily and quickly accessible. These methods are a cautious, but calculated, introduction into ideally being able to share all data as needed for the better of investigations, and are a step in the right direction. A well-implemented approach like this provides the foundation to increase both community and officer safety, and we welcome working with your regional departments to establish this if there is a need!

The GangScope Team