Explain the comparison of intelligence-gathering to academic research, as indicated in the text. Explain how this process is directly applicable to gathering intelligence

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• Before beginning, a researcher needs basic knowledge of a field and an understanding of sub-disciplines.
• Much of this background information has no direct bearing on the actual question a researcher is trying to answer, but without background preparation, the researcher cannot address the question.
• Command of basic information allows the researcher to move toward applying results.
• Applied information, the specificity the researcher seeks, is divided into both in-depth knowledge about a specific topic and the latest information from the discipline.
• In the sciences and social sciences, this process leads a researcher from general concepts to applied ideas, from abstract principles to glimpses of reality.
• Although academic in nature, this process is directly applicable to gathering intelligence. Police intelligence systems can be modeled after academic research.
• Basic intelligence involves general information about a subject and its sub-disciplines.
• Applied intelligence involves gathering basic information about a target and real-time information about current activities.
• The practical application of this process comes through organizing structures aimed at collecting, analyzing, and forwarding information.
• Someone in every American law enforcement agency should be assigned to collect and forward terrorist intelligence.
• In small agencies this may mean assigning a person who represents several police and sheriff's departments, and in moderate-size agencies the function could be performed in the detective bureau or the planning unit.
• Large metropolitan and state police agencies need full-time intelligence units. At the state and regional levels, efforts must be made to assemble, categorize, and analyze information and place it within national and international contexts.