A new Dallas police analytical intelligence center will collect and analyze crime tips and trends from all over, and then quickly get it to officers and detectives in the field, reports the Dallas Morning News. “This is sort of like an express lane for crime fighting real time,” said Lt. Todd Thomasson, commander of the Fusion Center Development Team. The center brings “intelligence-led policing” to Dallas. Developed in Great Britain, the model seeks to harness the power of information sharing to pinpoint the worst threats and the most dangerous criminals – and then find ways to neutralize them. “This is not traditional policing,” said Bob Taylor, a criminologist at the University of North Texas who is helping develop the center. “This is going to require a whole different way of thinking.”
“Intelligence-led policing” seeks to knock down the walls to sharing information and to drastically change the need-to-know culture so prevalent in law enforcement. “The structure of policing doesn’t match the structure of the criminal world they’re trying to stop,” said Jerry Ratcliffe, an associate professor of criminal justice at Temple University and former London police officer. “We may have a drug squad and a street squad and a corruption squad. You have one criminal who deals in drugs and is in a gang.” Once the center is fully operational with the delivery of equipment and software under a $1.5 million federal Homeland Security grant, the new software will link various internal databases.