What can police attempt to do to address identity theft? Gang activities?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There are four measures that police can use to respond to identity theft:
1. Encourage business awareness of the responsibility to protect employee and client records. This includes having a privacy policy, training employees, and limiting data collection and access to information needed.
2. Educate people about protecting their personal information. Inform people that the Internet has an enormous amount of information about how to avoid becoming an identity theft victim.
3. Collaborate with government and other service organizations to protect private information. Police should work with agencies and businesses to keep Social Security numbers, birth certificates, and other such information out of general circulation; prohibit their sale; restrict access to such information; and help victims resolve problems.
4. Work with local banks to encourage credit card issuers to adopt improved security practices. The police can work with local banks to establish procedures for local identity theft victims to repair the damage done and to get their credit card accounts operating again. Credit card companies can also be pressured to provide better credit-card identity verification, photographs on credit cards, and passwords on credit accounts.

To address gang activities, targeted patrols or a dedicated gang units are the most frequently used measures used to combat gangs, followed by participation in a multiagency gang task forces and coordinated probation searches. Civil gang ordinances or injunctions are also used. As with other crime problems, arrests alone do not solve gang problems in the long term. In order to address gang problems, comprehensive, multifaceted approaches are more successful. For example, the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) Program, a school-based, law enforcement officer-instructed, classroom curriculum serves to combat risk factors and helps youth develop positive life skills that will help them avoid gang involvement and violent behavior. Another program, the Blueprints for Violence Prevention project, has identified activities that have been shown to reduce violence, delinquency, and drug use with gang members or youth at risk for gang membership. “Pulling levers” / focused deterrence strategies can also be effective.