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DPS beefs up intelligence work
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Posted on Jul 31 2000
The Department of Public Safety has expanded its Criminal Intelligence Section to cope with different types of domestic and international crimes occurring in the CNMI.
DPS Commissioner Charles W. Ingram said the four units of CIS, namely international crimes, domestic crimes, drug trafficking and criminal intelligence analysis, were created to specifically meet the increase in work loads.
Requests from other countries and agencies within the United States have increased for assistance in locating some people. On domestic crimes, most of the data comes from the Criminal Investigation Bureau but the CIS will take charge in analyzing the information to see any pattern or crime trends in the criminal activity.
The commissioner said, “We also would like to see if there’s any connection with any gang activity. We are not saying that there is an increase in gang activity here but DPS needs to know if there is a trend.”
DPS has requested $50,000 specifically for the increase in operations, equipment and manpower of CIS. This is part of the $17.6 million total budget the department is seeking for Fiscal Year 2001.
The personnel assigned to CIS has increased from two to four to handle the increase in case load. DPS has a Korean and Japanese speaking agents to assist them in their work. DPS has never had a separate budget for CIS.
The use of criminal intelligence analysis techniques has provided a standardized approach yet offers flexibility in understanding a series of related crimes, criminal networks and analyzing the scope of and patterns in a criminal activity.
Mr. Ingram said this will also allow investigators to identify links between crimes, association among criminals, individual people’s roles in criminal activity and the relationship between crime and other factors such as location, employment and communication methods.
Police organizations have recognized the importance of crime analysis over the last 25 years as an additional supportive tool for international cooperation in police matters.
