The Crime Analysis Prevention Team

When I left my last full-time Crime Analyst position in 2020, I thought I was largely done with working inside police departments. Reality would quickly disabuse me of that notion and I was fortunate enough to stay engaged with the profession in a number of ways. My full-time roles had me meeting with law enforcement agencies at all levels- assessing their capacities and gaps and configuring data and intelligence analysis solutions to meet their specific needs. Through the Crime Analyst in Residence (CAR) program, I got the opportunity to provide training and technical assistance to small and rural departments. Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) has sent me across the country to conduct crime analysis assessments and provide recommendations for agencies of all sizes. The one thing that all of these places have in common is that they’ve recognized their processes need to improve. At the beginning of our engagements, they often provide a wish list full of the newest law enforcement analysis technology that they’ve seen at conferences and events. They ask if they need to hire more analysts or what training regimen we can provide the analysts they already have working. Should they implement a fusion center, real-time crime center or crime gun information center? While I love the enthusiasm and the willingness to invest, more often than not, the biggest gains are to be had through an honest evaluation of who you’ve surrounded your Crime Analysts with. 

Crime Analysts do not work in a vacuum. The modern day police department is a vibrant eco system of roles, personalities, attitudes, dispositions and skill sets. The analysts’ ability to be successful is dependent on every other member of the department. Unfortunately, many departments employ a Crime Analysis Prevention Team. These archetypes are united in their common goal of making sure that changes do not occur, improvements are never implemented and analysts are never successful. This elite squad of toxic ne'er-do-wells are not hard to spot. In fact, they stop just short of making monogrammed polos and wearing them to work, with their first initial and last name printed prominently on their left breast, just above the words “Crime Analysis Prevention Team” and the image of a department badge.  Here are the squad members you need to keep an eye out for and how to handle them. 

Chief Apathy of the Whatever Tribe

As the name implies, this is a Chief, Sheriff or Executive with an apathetic attitude towards Crime Analysis. The old-school version of this Chief is the easiest to spot. His dead eyes will often roll when any mention of RMS systems or analyzing trends is discussed. “It’s all a bunch of bullshit” he’ll say when surrounded by his similarly minded officers, in a thinly veiled attempt to be recognized as “old school” by his subordinates. As toxic as this Chief is, there is an even more insidious version. 

These new, Gen-X Chiefs do not openly criticize analysts or the field. Quite the opposite, they gladly trot their analyst in front of the media, neighborhood groups, academics or external visitors to show how incredibly progressive they are. They talk at length about the value of analysis, about the tremendous impact their analyst has had, and the great promise that analysis holds in making policing smarter. The face put on by this version of the Apathy Chief couldn’t be more different from his more abbrasive counter-part, but that’s where the differences end. 

In practice, both of these Chiefs run their department the same way. Meetings with the analyst are rare, but not nearly as rare as funding for new technology or training. Chief Apathy may or may not be glad to have an analyst in their building but regardless, they’ve never spent a minute thinking about how analysis drives the mission of their agency. Will they implement problem-oriented policing, Stratified Policing, Intelligence-led policing or some combination? Will they run regular COMPSTAT meetings? What analytical products does the Chief need to execute his vision for the department? At best, these are after thoughts. Analysts are often lured into working for such Chiefs when they’re told “This job can be whatever you want it to be” in their interview. Chief Apathy won’t care too much about your skill set, your impact or your lack thereof. To this type of leader, the number of people under their command is a point of pride and simply having more is all the motivation they need to plead their case to fund your position under the auspices of advancing the department. To paraphrase Liz Wiseman, to them you are a curio in a cabinet, on display but never fully utilized. 

How to Handle Chief Apathy

In my younger years, I used to think there was no dealing with Chief Apathy. To be sure,  an apathetic chief is just about the worst problem a Crime Analyst can have, but its not hopeless. 

Providing the apathetic Chief with wide-spread recognition is the surest way to motivate him to give a shit. The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) gives away tens of millions of dollars in grants every year. If you manage to snag one of those for your agency, not only will it mean that you bring in critical funding to the bottom line, but you’ll undoubtedly give your Chief at least one or two press conferences where he gets to announce the award and talk about how amazing the impact will be for the community. The grant funds you bring in can lead to more hiring and thus more “prestige” for Chief Apathy. Think of each new member of the department as a new feather in Chief Apathy’s headdress. Supporting financial investigations can provide a similar result. If you’re able to contribute to investigators seizing a few extra assets, that’s a sure-fire way to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Chief. If you can win some awards or make other news-worthy contributions, you may just put one brick in place on the road to winning over Chief Apathy. 

Many well-meaning analysts who work for Chief Apathy attempt to implement data-driven, sustainable crime reduction strategies in their department. This is a huge mistake. First and foremost, your likelihood of succeeding is near zero but the likelihood of sustaining success IS zero. This is because Chief Apathy doesn’t actually believe we can lower crime rates or he doesn’t care one way or the other. Whatever empirically sound program you manage to scrap together without his support will always be drowned out in a dissonance of higher priorities. 

The Mother Hen Records Manager

It’s no coincidence that this member of the Crime Analyst Prevention Team tends to be female. Step into any Dispatch, Records or even Crime Analysis Unit and you’ll find a majority of these positions are female. The sworn side of policing is overwhelmingly male dominated. If I had to guess, I would say the non-sworn side is overwhelmingly female. There’s a lot to unpack in that simple statement alone but if your modern sensibilities are offended that I used gendered terminology to label this Nazi bureaucrat rest assured that all the women that work with a Mother Hen Records Manager have called her far worse things than I will in this post. 

Like the other members of the team, the Mother Hen is not hard to spot. You have to go through her for everything. Her role has inexplicably grown far outside of records to include database management, IT, procurement and/or dispatch. You can’t get a key to the building without going through the Mother Hen. She is the only one with phone numbers or email addresses to contact RMS customer support, building maintenance and other critical contractors. Of course, if you need any of their help, you can simply submit a request to Mother Hen and she’ll handle it for you. If you need supplies, that too is simply an email away. All things go through Mother Hen. 

Police Chiefs and Sheriff’s come and go, but Mother Hen has been at the department since time immemorial. Everyone knows exactly how long she’s been in the department because it somehow finds its way into every conversation. She’ll gleefully tell you tall tales about something a Captain did back when he was in the academy or how much better things were when cops rode horses and Records used typewriters. This nostalgia though masks a deep-seated issue for Crime Analysts. Analysts are, by nature, disruptive employees. It’s their responsibility to move the department forward into the realm of technology that Mother Hen is very uncomfortable with. No, Mother Hen much prefers checking her CompuServe email from her Windows 95 computer. Weirdly, when conflict arises between these two, Mother Hen tends to win using a few well-worn techniques. 

Like other members of the team, Mother Hen preys on the fact that her department represents a niche that most officers have no experience in. This makes fear an effective weapon. When an analyst suggests changes to record-keeping practices, to produce cleaner data and better analysis, Mother Hen is ready with a magazine full of dire warnings. Perhaps the changes you need will affect accreditation or reporting to the state. Maybe the RMS Vendor is simply incapable of making the changes needed. As the tar on her heels hardens, she may deploy stories from “back in the day” when similar requests were put forth and attempts were made to accommodate them but calamity ensued. While her defensive tactics can stand in the way of progress, she is fully capable of brandishing her bird-claws and going on the offensive. 

Many an unsuspecting analyst has triggered the wrath of Mother Hen. All you need do is automate a simple reporting task such as Clery Act or FOIA requests to call down the wrath of Mother Hen. By the time you realize the egregious error you’ve made, it’ll be too late. Like Daenerys sweeping down on King’s Landing, Mother Hen will leave no stone unburnt. You’ve crossed into her kingdom and you’ve taken one of her tasks that she and she alone is allowed to execute. This can’t stand. If too many of those tasks were taken away, her precious control would be gone. Like Tinkerbell starved for attention, the lack of authority would slowly siphon the life from her and she would die. You thought you were simply making life easier, but you’re actually killing Mother Hen. 

How to Handle Mother Hen

It’s possible that your agency employs a Mother Hen and your paths never cross. Perhaps records keeping practices never necessitate a conversation with her unit. Maybe you’ve got great management at the top and ample support to overcome the Crime Analysis Prevention Unit. Perhaps, on your first day, you win Power Ball. If none of these things are true, eventually you’ll have to deal with Mother Hen. You have three potential options. 

You could try charming Mother Hen. If she sees you as someone who bends the knee and legitimizes her claim to the Law Enforcement Throne then you might be able to gently manipulate her all the way to blissful productivity. Take the position that you’re simply there to learn from her vast experience. Tell her about how great her Records unit is compared to other unit’s that you’ve seen. I have no personal history with this to know for sure, but I suspect that favorable comparisons to other, rival Mother Hen Records Managers provides an ecstasy-like high to the Mother Hen. 

You could build your army and stage a rebellion. Be forewarned, Mother Hen is inexplicably more powerful than you realize. She’s an expert at dropping poison into the ears of law enforcement executives and her relationships inside the department, both good and bad, run much deeper than yours. She has allies who will support her and she has previously vanquished foes that will warn you against opposing her. If you’re going to overwhelm Mother Hen, you’ll need to start with a Chief. If your department suffers from a Chief Apathy, abandon all hope of this working. There’s nothing Chief Apathy hates more than the clucking of Mother Hen juxtaposed against your talking points, which I imagine he finds similar to the sound of a dying giraffe. 

You could confront Mother Hen directly. This is definitely the most mature and professional approach. It will not work. If you walk into the Hen House with anything other than tribute for the matriarch, she will beat her wings and start a whirlwind of negativity that will serve the dual purpose of preventing you from obtaining the support you need and also make you hate coming to work every day. 

The Oakley IT Expert

Oh, he’s a cop alright. Even outside of uniform, his 5.11 pants, Oakley sunglasses and knife clipped to his pocket announce to the world in no uncertain terms that this guy is a cop’s cop. He may look a little out of place, since his role includes overseeing IT projects and managing IT experts but that won’t stop him from sitting proudly at his desk each morning with his Glock and badge on his hip. Neither will a complete and total lack of any form of IT education, training or experience. This man completed his police academy and a four year Criminal Justice degree before spending 20 years on Patrol and rising through the ranks to manage IT and shit in your Cheerios. 

The Oakley IT Expert is one of the most frequent fiends the Crime Analyst must confront, often early in their tenure. Oh, you need access to data? It doesn’t matter that your Chief carved out budget for a data analyst or that it was approved by the city manager and City council, you still have to go through this hero. While the rest of the thin blue line is protecting society from murderers, drug dealers and the like, this lone stalwart of law and order is protecting your department’s data by preventing any of it from ever being seen. Like the Mother Hen, his chief weapon is fear and he has a few tried-and-true idioms to rely on to make sure you don’t analyze shit. 

His first weapon is to appeal to the core of what it means to be a police officer. Cops are sworn. Civilians are not. It is unfathomable that a non-sworn civilian who has never qualified with a glock or been maced could competently handle sensitive information. Perhaps handing law enforcement sensitive data to one of the normies would violate CJIS Compliance rules! He’s never read any of those rules but he knows they’re there and they’re very, very scary. If pressed, he may dig into subjects he’s even more ignorant of. “A lone SQL query can crash our network!” he’ll proclaim or perhaps he’ll fallback on a need to maintain security. After all, if you just go around making analytical products, one of them could fall into the wrong hands. No sir, this barrel-chested IT expert knows the best way to maintain data security is to never analyze data at all. 

The Oakley IT expert is motivated by hubris. Rarely is he a respected member of the department. He was stashed in this role, to deal with tasks that no other cops wanted but the IT realm is somehow his fiefdom. He didn’t waste 20 years of his career in a dead end job, no way! He’s in charge of IT, he’s a thought leader, he’s an expert. He. Is. God. Throwing out words like “ODBC”, “SQL” and “Dashboard” in conversation are going to be triggering because, he doesn’t really know what those things are. Nothing is more terrifying to the ignorant manager than the knowledgeable subordinate. 

Dealing with the Oakley IT Expert

Do not underestimate the Oakley IT Expert. His very existence implies a deep divide between sworn and non-sworn. Why didn’t they get someone with some education, training or experience in technology to manage the IT department? Because whereas the department needs civilian experts, it goes without saying that any and all promotional opportunities must go to sworn officers. Why? For the same reason that Oakley IT Expert is likely to win any confrontations with you- because they’re sworn. 

The best way to deal with the Oakley IT Expert is to simply outrank him. If a request is coming from you its not going very far. If its coming from a Chief or Sheriff, the Oakley IT Expert will fall in line quickly. Be careful in enlisting the help of a supervisor at or near the Oakley IT Expert’s level. He may see this as an attack on his kingdom and elevate his “concerns” to ever-higher levels of police management who are even less knowledge or interested in whatever it is that’s being discussed. The minute your issue becomes a subject talked about in a room filled exclusively with police Command Staff your chances of success drop to near zero. 

The Idea Fairy

The idea fairy is an enabler and like most enablers, they appear very “nice.” Unlike the other members of the team, they actually do support Crime Analysis and you, the analyst. Perhaps they went to a trade show and saw amazing technology, or maybe they read a case study about an incredible crime prevention program. Maybe back in the day they heard about a team at another department that did awesome stuff with technology. Regardless of the source, their hearts and minds are filled with child-like wonder and they have limitless energy to invest in suggesting new activities for you, the analyst, to engage in. 

The idea fairy, as the name suggests, has great ideas. Those ideas often turn into directives but that’s the point where the idea fairy’s involvement ends. They won’t help you overcome budgetary, technological or management issues. Nor do they respect the task load you’ve already been given. Idea fairies exist to float into your life, fill your world with pixie dust and promptly fuck off. It’s their job to drop in on a random Tuesday afternoon while you’re neck deep in case support, COMPSTAT, or writing bulletins and tell you to execute on their latest flight of fancy. If an idea fairy is high ranking enough, their drop-ins may carry the weight of a previously undiscussed and very expensive purchase the department has made in new software. Software which, it is now your responsibility to learn and operate.  Software which you may or may not have ever heard of. Congratulations. 

Academics, vendors and contractors love a high ranking idea fairy. For all our cynical talk about “moving at the speed of government”, the executive Idea Fairy has the super power of snapping their fingers and making anything they want happen with no vetting or discussion. These opportunistic outsiders can stumble across an idea fairy at a conference and lock in a lucrative sale in a matter of minutes.

Idea Fairies are great at starting but they almost always fail to actually finish anything. Often times bringing new tools, practices or policies to a police department requires a great deal of thought, execution and management. Each of these would prevent the idea fairy from going out and finding the next new, exciting, shiny thing to bring back into your boring world.

Dealing with the Idea Fairy

Idea Fairies may seem like the lesser evil among members of the Crime Analysis Prevention Team but they can cause as much damage as anyone. Let them go for too long and you’ll find yourself writing grants, flying drones, watching cameras, writing code, collecting bullet casings, attending pointless meetings and writing policy in addition to your usual duties. You can never actually do enough to satisfy the Idea Fairy. If ever you had a moment to catch your breath, they’d insist you use that moment to make them a new intelligence database because the one they currently have isn’t good enough. 

An Idea Fairy is an untamed bronco, not a rampaging herd. You don’t need to stop them per se, you need to harness their enthusiasm. The key to dealing with an idea fairy is structure. They thrive in completely unstructured environments where they’re free to pop into your office, drop an A-bomb in your world and dance away atop a cloud of light while a procession of enchanted forest critters flutter around their orbit. You might enact an official process for submitting new task orders for the Crime Analysis Unit, one that requires some involvement from superiors. You can schedule a monthly crime analysis expansion meeting where new procedures can be suggested and discussed among a team. If an Idea Fairy hands you a great idea with a real opportunity to expand analysis throughout your agency, be sure that it includes some regular responsibilities for the Idea Fairy as well. Maybe they’re required to give feedback on a new product or present how they’re actioning those products at a regularly scheduled COMPSTAT meeting. Anything you can do to slide some of the weight of this new task onto their shoulders will help you reduce superfluous requests and increase the degree of follow-through. 

Conclusion

Keep in mind that not everyone who throws up an obstacle is necessarily an antagonist. Police departments balance competing priorities every day. Crime Analysis will, on occasion, have to take a back seat to information security, record-keeping practices, funding equipment purchases, etc. Relative to the other lines of business within a department, crime analysis is fairly new. Police departments have employed cops, dispatches, administrative assistants and forensic experts for nearly 100 years before the first data analysts darkened the halls of law enforcement. By your very nature, you’re going to cause disruption and the structure of departments exist to minimize disruption. Inevitably you’ll have to confront the Crime Analysis Prevention Team and the cold truth is that you’re likely to take a loss at some point. 

One of the coolest things that I’ve learned about Crime Analysts themselves is that none of them learned data analysis in a traditional setting. Most of us came from the mean streets of dirty data and learning from YouTube. Whatever the field as as whole may lack, the ability to learn, adapt and be flexible has emerged as one of the modern crime analyst’s biggest strengths. The Crime Analysis Prevention Team may prevent you from solving an institutional problem but keep in mind that there often lies a work-around somewhere in the collective knowledge of the analyst community. When you find yourself frustrated, the best move is to reach out to others and ask how they’ve overcome the problems you’re running into.