Data Fusion as a Strategy for Law Enforcement

Echoing one of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s most famous lines, more and more law enforcement leaders are saying it’s time to “tear down these walls.”  In this case, they’re not talking about physical walls, but the organizational and technological walls that separate the vital information law enforcement uses to fight crimes and protect public safety. Yes, we are talking about silos. 

The U.S. law enforcement environment is filled with silos, resulting all too often in a lack of information sharing between the almost 18,000 separate law enforcement agencies in the country. Even more strikingly, the silos also exist within single agencies – with data that is often stored under the same roof but is not able to be accessed or viewed or analyzed on a single platform.  In many cases, arrest records are siloed from investigative records, and similarly ballistics data, crime lab data, digital forensic data, security video files, license plate reader data, records management systems (RMS) data, and more are stored and managed separately.   

This siloing approach is a loss because that data could solve problems – and crimes – if combined, integrated, and easily analyzed by investigators and analysts. 

And today there are no excuses for not doing it.   

Value of Data Sharing 

Consider these strong statements about the value of data sharing, all from a report by the National Institute of Justice, the U.S. Justice Department’s research and development arm: 

• “Limited collaboration and communication between regional or local forensic laboratories and law enforcement agencies hinders detection and linking of serial crimes and organized crime activities leading to violent offenses.” 

• “Forensic intelligence can be integrated into intelligence-led policing and other policing approaches to serve as a force multiplier and help identify people who are responsible for crime as well as illegal tactics, techniques, and procedures. This strategy may be especially helpful in instances of serial violent crimes (e.g., murder, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape) …” 

• “Research shows that integrating forensic data into the intelligence and crime analysis processes — and using forensics to proactively reduce, disrupt, and prevent crime — could yield a paradigm shift in criminal justice system applications and crime prevention.” 

Several research studies by criminologists also have found that integrating data from multiple crime data sources provides a clearer picture of crime in an area. 

If the benefits of data fusion are clear, what obstacles and challenges make it difficult for law enforcement agencies to accomplish it?   

Data Sharing Challenges 

• Jurisdictional and organizational barriers – As mentioned before, the sheer number of individual agencies at the local, state, and federal levels can be a barrier to information sharing. Nevertheless, much progress has been made in this area with the creation of information fusion centers and other initiatives to facilitate information sharing.   

• Legacy systems – Over the last 40 years, police agencies have made tremendous progress in applying information technology to improve efficiency and performance. Much of that effort is focused on digitizing information and making it easy to share. Even so, many individual applications, such as RMS, automated dispatch, arrest records, ballistics data, investigative reports, lab data, video files and more, are siloed.  

• Data variety and volume – Coping with today’s large volumes and the variety of data types is a significant challenge. The good news is that advanced analytic technologies can handle structured and unstructured data and analyze video, audio, and still images. They can also do so at scale by incorporating specialized big data tools like Elastic Search. 

• Specialization – Disciplines and workflows within crime labs are often highly specialized, creating challenges to comprehensively looking at data. Forensic datasets are frequently compared only within their disciplines, such as DNA, fingerprints/latent prints, firearms, footwear, drugs and toxicology.  

The Power of Data Fusion and Advanced Analytics 

Today’s advanced analytic platforms now make it possible for that data to be brought together, analyzed and visualized in multiple ways, including with the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, which can dramatically accelerate many tasks that were previously possible only with many hours, days or even months of manual effort.  These tasks include scanning video and audio files for crucial evidence, such as suspects, guns, drugs, vehicles, locations and other entities. For example, decision intelligence platforms like NEXYTE leverage those capabilities in order to generate transcripts of audio files and to translate text into multiple languages. Scoring models can be used to identify high-value suspects and groups, and the models can be easily customized to deal with the specific needs and risk/threat factors of any agency, depending on its area of focus or mission. 

An alternative approach that is sometimes proposed contends that you don’t need to fuse data into one platform for analysis; you can use advanced search queries to access the data being searched in its current or original location. There is some utility in that approach, but without having the data in a single platform, users cannot benefit from AI enhancements and cannot utilize many analytic approaches that may yield critical insights from seeing the data within the context of the broader picture.  

Bringing more relevant data together for analysis creates many benefits for law enforcement by accelerating investigations, generating key insights in specific cases, improving speed and efficiency, revealing patterns and trends that lead to better management of resources, and enabling better decision-making.  The technology and tools are available. It is no longer acceptable to maintain or make excuses for the silos that have held law enforcement agencies back – it’s time to tear down the walls. 

Ready to break down barriers in law enforcement data management? Click here for advanced analytics to accelerate case resolutions.