Community Policing and Intelligence

¶ … tenet of Christian societies is a need to create healthy and safe local communities. Christians frequently emphasize freedom and justice within the Judeo-Christian perspective. That means creation and promotion of fair criminal justice policies. These criminal justice policies must do away actions based on stereotypes and try to eliminate racial profiling as of apprehending potential criminals. With the support of religious entities and congregations, implementation of community-oriented policing methods through collaboration with intelligence-gathering entities may lead to effective and easier community policing.

Things like fusion centers and intelligence-led policing (ILP) may make such a novel aim possible. Fusion centers act as an information sharing center. Fusion centers were created under the U.S. Department of Justice through two government agencies: Office of Justice Programs and U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Most of them were formed from 2003-2007 (Rukus, Warner, & Zhang, 2017). The purpose of fusion centers is to promote at the federal level, information sharing from across various levels, including state and local-level government.

While statistics have not been updated since 2009, there exist approximately 72 fusion centers in the United States. One other purpose for fusion centers is potential use with Emergency Operations Center in case of a disaster. While the idea of a fusion center seems like a potentially powerful tool for law enforcement in terms of promotion of collaborative efforts through information sharing, what has already been executed has resulted in production of useless, inappropriate, or irrelevant intelligence reporting, with some fusion centers reporting no intelligence at all.

Even worse, a report done on the fusion centers stated some violated privacy and/or civil liberties. If fusion centers are to help law enforcement better handle interactions with minorities, they must use fusion centers in a way that improves police contact with minorities. Police contact is the entry point for the criminal justice system.

Consequently, biases (like any preconceptions) held by the police almost certainly cause racially discriminatory decisions about whom to investigate (stop, question, search) and how to interpret their behavior, and therefore partially account for disparities in criminal justice outcomes (Spencer, Charbonneau, & Glaser, 2016, p. 51). Police officers are on the front line of interactions with civilians and often experience stereotypical behavior while on duty or allow perceived stereotypes to influence their judgments and actions. A way to reduce the likelihood of police behaving in such a manner is through faith communities.

During the 1960's and into the 1970's racial profiling saw a rise in use as is seen now. Faith communities helped bring reform through community awareness. What positive effects came from such efforts may be reversed in the years to come. The main reason behind it could be intelligence-led policing. Intelligence-led policing (ILP), is a policing construct that focuses on management of risk and assessment. Intelligence officers often serve not as operation guiding intelligence but as guides to operations.

First witnessed in the 1990's in both American and the Great Britain, ILP urged cops to behave similar to spies to gather information to generate a greater number of apprehensions and combat recidivist offenders. Most of the ILP seen today has changed to include a 'revisionist' expansion, allowing integration of neighborhood policing as well as reassurance. Community policing, a part of ILP has shown at least in some research, to provide no positive effects concerning perception of safety that includes a positive effect on community participation within the metro core.

The article explains that suburbs and rural areas see a different implementation of community policing with emphasis on youth services. "For suburbs and rural areas, community policing is only related to youth services. Collective efficacy is positively associated with safety perceptions across all communities but only related to community participation in suburbs and low crime communities" (Rukus, Warner, & Zhang, 2017, p. 1). While low-crime areas see a benefit to community policing, the areas that witness a higher rate of racial profiling and interactions with law enforcement seeing no positive effects.

However, that is not to say ILP or fusion centers have no purpose in today's law enforcement. As Christians, have seen in the New Testament, 'Out With the Old, In With the New' (2 Cor. 5:1-21). Meaning within this context, if something is not working the way it is, it can be transformed. The reality of the American economy and budgets has led to an effort to maximize limited assets. Maximization of limited assets can be done through collaboration across various government agencies and organizations.

Fusion centers and ILP can help foster communication and collaboration between law enforcement groups and even promote changes in policies that reduce instances of racial profiling and promote fairer policing actions. An example of a fusion center and ILP working towards a positive effect within the Criminal Justice System is the CFC in Massachusetts. Working cooperatively with the U.S.

Attorney's Office, Massachusetts State Police's firearms identification section and its crime laboratory, Boston Police Department, ATF, Massachusetts Criminal History Systems Board, and other local police agencies, CFC began collecting, processing, and analyzing crime and weapons-trace data to provide policy makers with data on firearms crime patterns, the types of weapons recovered at crime scenes or during arrests, and the source cities and states of these guns (Lambert, 2010). The need for change in policies cannot be effectively implemented quickly if collaborative efforts remain stagnant.

ILP and fusion centers help to transmit data between organizations faster and can lead to higher levels of communication between each government agency over various levels of government. What in the past was seen as a waste of effort and resources, could be an effective means of communication in a post-recession society? To avoid issues of trust within communities over fusion centers and ILP, there must be a level of transparency. People must be able to gain some level of access to the information collected through this manner.

Ephesians 4:25 states: "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another." To build trust, one must speak the truth. To hide the processes of fusion centers and ILP methods is to hide the potential for abuse and inefficiency.