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of the police. State and federal attorney generals' offices ordered restrictions
limiting police wire tap and other intelligence gathering programs and
mandated the purging of intelligence files.
Local police and sheriffs found maintaining large intelligence units
increasingly more difficult. Many cities abdicated their criminal intelligence
duties and relied instead on the bureaucratic federal agencies. Local
Intelligence units like SPI were gutted or skeletonized.
In my opinion this loss in local police intelligence resulted in the explosive
growth of organized criminal gangs on the streets. We were fighting gangs
blindfolded by the lack of important intelligence. If those local intelligence
units existed today, even international terrorist cells would be more quickly
located and identified. The terrorists operating in small and medium cities
would stand out to local units and the investigators who would have already
been in place.
Utilize Intelligence
Whether you work in "Small Town" U.S.A. or "Mega Metropolis," intelligence
is the key to how effectively you can direct your limited resources against
gangs. There are many sources for this information; interviews,
interrogations, informants, and search warrants are all ways to build your
gang intelligence file. I suggest you utilize the best of your current
information and set up regular surveillance operations. You should spy.
Static and Active Surveillance
Static surveillance is probably the easiest to use. Commit a couple of people
to watch the gang hangouts. Photograph gang members and their vehicles.
Look for a neighborhood home or other location that can be used as an
observation post. I have used church bell towers, abandoned houses, "cherry
picker" cranes, mobile homes, empty project apartments, and vehicles
disguised as plumbing trucks and UPS vans. Be creative.
There are two schools of thought in the use of static surveillances; one
theory says that this should be a passive monitoring of the group for
intelligence gathering only, not as an opportunity to make arrests. Arresting
any of the subjects might "burn" the surveillance and possibly give away the
observation points, some say.
I prefer the second school of thought, active surveillance. Give the officers in
the observation point (OP) a radio and assign a marked police unit to act on
the information. If the surveillance team observes something of interest,
they can radio to the marked unit to make the vehicle or pedestrian stop
several blocks from the observation area. Arrests also produce good
intelligence. With care this can be done without giving away the OP.
Electronic Surveillance
Can't afford to tie up three or four officers in a static surveillance? Electronic
surveillance is another easy way to build intelligence files. Try a hidden time
lapse camera. All you good deer hunters know what I mean. You can buy
these digital cameras and set them up to snap photos every half-hour or so.
Buy a fake hollow decorative garden rock and mount a camera in it. Set it up
during the night and let it go. This can also be done from an unoccupied
parked car, or a tree on the parkway. With just a little probable cause you
can have a "pole camera" set up on a telephone pole across from gang
central.
Electronic surveillance includes wire taps, or "Title III" operations in the
federal jargon. There is one place that allows you to monitor gang members
without having to write a lengthy wiretap warrant. Most state and federal
prisons and county jails usually have systems in place that routinely monitor
telephone calls of bad guys. Monitor the telephone calls coming from the
gang unit or discipline row because that's where the best calls come from.
Mobile Covert Surveillance Team
If your department can afford the expense and manpower, I suggest a
mobile covert seven-person surveillance team. A sergeant and six officers,
each with a radio in an individual non-police-looking vehicle, are the basic
components of the team.
Unlike what's often depicted in movies or on TV, one or two people cannot
sustain a covert surveillance for any length of time. The optimum team
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Comments (3)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
walkin' trails @ 2/21/2009 7:38 AM
This article really summed up a lot of issues I've been wondering about lately. From my point of
view, there has been too much emphasis placed on electronic surveillance, with so much effort made
to downplay and even eliminate the human intelligence gathering. Add to that territoral disputes and
distrust between various LE agencies within an area of operation, and even within an agency. How
many of us belong to agencies with enforcement groups that are already loosly structured to resemble
the "mobile surveillance team" Sergeant Valdemar describes, yet have either lost sight of the original
concept or have never had the leadership or training necessary to build such a team? How many
agencies train their supervisors and senior enforcement personnel to organize and lead such a team?
And on the subject of intelligence in general, I can go on and on from my own experiences and
observations, but there isn't enough space. This was a great article, and I would like to see Sgt.
Valdemar expand on the subject by discussing more in detail the basic structure, individual team
Excellent, its easy to see lots of work went into this article, from the many years in this area, solid
tactics-operations that worked. Reading this last night left me with a new outlook on this very serious
problem of today, and knowing something that in the morning I did not. That is to be part of the
solution or part of the problem as spelled out. The key to success or failure as Sergeant Valdemar,
pointed out is Operations Security or in DOD terms OPSEC. We must also keep in mind, what we
can do unto others, they can do unto us! With that in mind two recommendations: (1).
http://www/ioss.gov MAINTAINING OPERATIONAL SECURITY: Minimizing the Risk of Law
Enforcement Mission Failure as it relates to the protection of law enforcement operations. (Go to
Publications section or do a search for this) Interagency OPSEC Support Staff and L&O Magazine
Vol 44, No 10 October 1996. by John E. Glorioso and Robert B. Ritter. (2).
http://www.varropress.com/ LAW ENFORCEMENT COUNTERINTELLIGENCE Lawrence B.
Sulc
skinni99 @ 3/14/2009 10:16 PM
This was an excellent article. I feel honored to be part of the team I was recently assigned to. It is
exactly the team Sgt. Valdemar is talking about. We have 7 deputies, 1 corporal and 1 sergeant.
During the last two weeks we started and prematurely ended an extensive gang conspiracy. In only
two weeks of investigation (mostly surveillance) we will put 17 gang members (not all from the
same gang) in prison for years. One thing that was not mentioned was the ability (sometimes) to fund
these investigations as you go. If your team gets into a decent investigation you may have the ability
to seize money to fund future investigations as we did on this one.