Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU)

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the third largest police agency in the United States. The LAPD has approximately 9885 sworn officers and 2718 support staff. They cover approximately 500 square miles and is for the protection of over 4 million people. With that in mind, managing such a behemoth agency is a complicated and problematic endeavor. Therefore, one of the LAPD strengths is the way they manage themselves and protect citizens. Another strength of the LAPD is created many various kinds of investigation divisions, bureaus unit and special operation units. The components allow the LAPD to address a different kind of crimes, services, and investigation. Some of these components are specialized units with members that specially trained to for the unit's purpose or the specific type of crime or investigation. For an example, they have counter-terrorism bureau, background investigation unit, commercial crime division, gang and narcotic division, juvenile division, robbery homicide division and also technical investigation division. The LAPD also addresses the needs of the community by setting up many stations to handle the needs of their constituents. The LAPD also has a support unit to manage the day to day operation such as the personal division, jail division, property division and administrative section to manage massive bureaucratic tasks.

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.

How can lawmakers maintain a balanced approach while collecting intelligence on United States persons in order to prevent a national security crime and provide full consideration to the rights of said persons? Does the current legislation permit U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agents to conduct investigations to the fullest extent or does it hamper their ability to properly investigate? Lawmakers have asked these questions since the inception of government executed counterintelligence operations in order to support our country’s leaders trying to strike the perfect balance of investigative freedom and citizen’s rights. When the Counterintelligence Corps was formed in 1961 there were few laws that governed intelligence collection.

The globalization of crime has become a renowned problem for the law worldwide; as societies become more interconnected, an act in one country can have repercussions in another which is across another continent. This is primarily down to technological developments, as nowadays communication between countries is simple compared to decades ago. Alongside this transport is also a major problem, as it means that illegal activities can take place in more than one country as goods are transferred between the two, allowing the criminal world to reach all corners of the world.

Terrorism has always existed in American policing, and while the groups committing these acts have changed, their intentions have not. Their intentions being to cause maximum fear and scare those who they target into doing and following their ideology. In the 1970’s and 1980’s in America, the main terrorist groups were associated with the environmental movement and race based groups, while other parts of the world were dealing with Islamic extremists, were committing terrorist acts across the Middle East without much intervention from the United States. In fact the group Al-Qaeda, who attacked the World Trade Centers in 1993 and 2001, found its roots in the 1980’s fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with weapons supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency. While the U.S. Federal Law Enforcement agencies knew of these groups, they underestimated the capabilities of lone wolf, small cell, and whole terrorist organizations. This was due to the fact that the Federal Law Enforcement agencies top priority was general crime such as organized crimes and white-collar crime.

Intelligence and Warning is Border and Transportation Security is responsible for protecting America's borders, territorial waters, and transportation systems by centralizing information-sharing and databases that track and monitor all aspects of border control and America's transportation systems. Domestic Counterterrorism covers a wide variety of activities, ranging from National Security Agency monitoring of telephone conversations to local police monitoring of persons of interest. Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets identifies a clear set of national goals and objectives and outlines the guiding principles that will underpin our efforts to secure the infrastructures and assets vital to our national security, governance, public health and safety, economy, and public confidence. Defending against Catastrophic Threats reduces vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. Emergency Preparedness and Response will create one emergency response plan to be used at all levels of government and will ensure that first-responders, from the federal government level down to local levels, receive proper training and equipment.

On the federal level, for the federal agency has power and jurisdiction over a stat as a whole. They rarely have limited jurisdiction. This could involve other countries that do or do not have ties with the United States. It can be hard to catch a suspect overseas. The federal agency that is looking for the suspect can communicate with the country in order to capture the suspect. The country may be willing to give the suspect up if they give some type of aid that can help their country out.

has aided the NSA and FBI in identifying and intercepting terrorist plots in the past. Following

As covered in lecture, the e-text also stressed the importance of law enforcement operating with up-to-date with the technology. The e-text also discussed law enforcement at a state level. The North Dakota Public Alerts is a state agency as it serves to protect and aid the entire state of North Dakota, not just a specific jurisdiction of the state.

This specific federal agency continually focuses on the importance of information sharing; it is committed to ensuring that all levels of law enforcement and those on the front lines have this information available (Homeland Security, d). This information gathering/sharing relies on using Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), preventing and combating serious crime agreements (PCSC), and agreements to share information on lost and stolen passports. DHS also works closely with the FBI to increase sharing of information with partners. In addition, the other resources that are relied on to help with this include working with national network of fusion center, nationwide suspicious activity reporting initiative, national

Many issues arise stating the implication of programs absence in a failure to notice properly investigate crimes that results to discriminating individuals. This framework in the 287g program consist of correctional, highway patrol, and task forces responsible for the national protection.

In order to utilize State and Local Law Enforcement in law enforcement operations (LEO) we need to look no further than the intelligence fusion center (IFC). It is here that information can be centralized, analyzed, fused and pushed out to the intelligence community (IC) for use in any situation, as long as it is relevant to the investigation. As a basis for this, in 2003, the Department of Justice drafted the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP) in order to guide law enforcement agencies to adopt intelligence-led policing as their primary means of operation. (Dept. of Justice, 2003)

INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK ASSESSMENT, H.R. Doc. No. 109, 2d Sess., at 129 (2006).

The FBI has created an organized crime program that focuses on the crimes and criminal enterprises that are creating the greatest threat to America. They have three units which are focused on La Cosa Nostra, Italian organized crime and racketeering. Also included are Middle Eastern, Asian and African criminal enterprises. The framework of the program is based on pursuing targets that have ties to national and international criminal enterprises and breaking them down; relying on flexibility to aid in pursuing organized crime by regions that are conducting racketeering activities. They have also partnered with people globally to assist in information during investigations. Italy and Hungary are included in this partnership. By partnering with other countries, tackling these groups of people becomes easier.

Intelligence is one of the first lines of defense used by the United States to protect the Country against both foreign and domestic threats (Johnson, 2010). There are many ways and methods of intelligence collections employed by the intelligence community such as “spies, eavesdropping, technical sources, and openly available materials” etc (Clark, 2013). Method used also depends on many factors such as available resources, time, agency involved, and intelligence collection source. U.S Intelligence agencies use different collection and analytical method that suit their collection function, structure and pro¬cess. For example, DNI/OSC relies on open source (OSINT), CIA uses human intelligence (HUMINT) tactic, DIA uses measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT), NSA employs signals intelligence (SIGINT), and NGA utilizes imagery intelligence (IMINT) techniques for their intelligence collections (Clark, 2013).