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 context