In the policing domain, these data points are usually people, locations, vehicles, property, organizations, and firearms. When visualizing this information, each individual entity becomes a “node” on the chart tied to other nodes by way of their relationships or “links” to each other. By leveraging link analysis, investigators are better...
The FBI dates investigative analysis to the 1970s as one aspect of support the Bureau provides to local, state, and federal agencies. The Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit developed a method of inferring offender characteristics from the details of a crime, a practice that became known as profiling. Investigative analysis today...
But even after they’ve successfully submitted a case to prosecution and an organization member is imprisoned, an investigator’s challenges aren’t over — instead, they morph. There are crimes committed in prison, and a correctional investigator needs to use similar tools that investigators used to build the initial RICO case in...
The past decade has focused particular attention on narcotics, including heroin, prescription opioids, and new synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that seizures of heroin in the U.S. rose from about 5,000 kilograms in 2012 to more than 7,000 in 2016. According...
With an estimated 24.9 million victims worldwide at any given time, human traffickers prey on adults and children of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities, exploiting them for profit. The scope of this type of crime is broad – in fact, Polaris, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking, has...
Lacking a system to properly triage cases, investigators can be left scrambling to prioritize both time and resources. We have previously discussed the critical need for a dedicated case management tool that supplements records management systems (RMS) and supports investigations. In this blog, we will explore Shotspotter Investigate as a...
Investigators sift through massive amounts of data in their day-to-day operations and rely on information-sharing both within their own agency and across multiple agencies. Without access to enough information, finding and following up on the right leads would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, finding the...
Closely related to gangs are transnational organized crime (TOC) groups – also of major concern to the FBI – involved in crimes across the spectrum from drug trafficking, murder, human trafficking, money laundering, firearms trafficking, and more. These types of organized criminal enterprises tend to involve large groups of bad...
Currently, most record management systems (RMS) are designed primarily for reporting incidents at the patrol level, and they lack the analytical capabilities and task management for law enforcement investigations that have greater complexity. Yet, most law enforcement departments are still primarily leveraging RMS for police operations, and ultimately losing key...
However, many units managing intelligence investigations are still trying to manage their growing caseloads with spreadsheets and other archaic, manual case management systems that are preventing them from gathering information as efficiently and effectively as possible. In this blog, we’ll discuss what the primary duties are for criminal intelligence investigators,...
About ShotSpotter, Inc.
ShotSpotter is a leader in precision policing solutions that enable law enforcement to more effectively respond to, investigate and deter crime.
