Understanding This Manual

Understanding This Study Manual

The intent of this study manual is to provide perspective and guidance for the development and delivery of professional training for law enforcement and fraud professionals. It is recognized that any type of “standard” can be debated based on an individual’s personal philosophy, professional priorities, and life experiences. To minimize bias or atypical context, the development process for these standards used a consensual approach reflecting the cumulative judgment of law enforcement intelligence practitioners, managers, executives, trainers, and scholars from all levels of government.

The standards reflect the collective judgment of these subject-matter experts (SMEs) with respect to the minimum training needed in each noted classification to provide the basic knowledge, skills, and abilities for personnel in each classification to perform their intelligence duties. For the intelligence analyst, those duties would be at the entry level.

This document should be viewed as a “living document” because supplements may be developed in the future. Future supplements may address additional training classifications or other specialized training needs based on threats that, although not criminal, have implications for homeland security.

Philosophy

These minimum standards were created within the context of the following statement of philosophy as applied to all training categories:

“This training is designed to develop a culture of information analysis and information sharing within the law enforcement communities for the purpose of safeguarding America’s communities while protecting citizens’ privacy and civil rights.

Understanding Minimum Standards

The SMEs who developed these standards expressed the need to reinforce the fact that these are minimum training standards. Personnel who attend training that meets these standards will possess core competencies to perform their duties lawfully and effectively. Of course, effectiveness and efficiency will increase with both experience and additional training. Program developers are urged to expand the modules’ content and times as practicable. This is particularly true as new laws, issues, trends, and best practices emerge. Standards are dynamic and reflect the best knowledge at the time they are written. Monitoring changes within the training environment is a critical responsibility of training program developers. Permeating each component of the training should be the consideration of issues related to fusion centers, the Information Sharing Environment (ISE), privacy issues, and community policing, as applicable to each component of the training.

The minimum standards outlined in this document are recommendations for core minimum criminal intelligence training standards for each training classification:

• Intelligence Analyst;
• Intelligence Manager & Commander;
• Law Enforcement Executive;
• Law Enforcement Officer – Basic Criminal Intelligence;
• Law Enforcement Officer – Criminal Intelligence Refresher;
• Loss Prevention & Fraud Professionals;
• Loss Prevention & Fraud Executives; and
• Criminal Intelligence Officer
• Human / Sex Trafficking
• Immigration Enforcement

The recommendations include objectives, standards, and suggested curriculum/sources of information, as well as time allocations. Standards are defined as specific courses or topics of instruction required to meet the training objective.

Additional Criminal Intelligence Training

The training categories contained in this document are drawn from those articulated in the NCISP and are dependent largely on a person’s specific assignment in a law enforcement organization. It is recognized there are important and relevant intelligence training programs that are not covered by the standards; for example, programs for developing an intelligence capacity in a law enforcement agency, new programs focused specifically on intelligence-led policing, or a program on public/private partnerships for the intelligence process and the ISE. Similarly, new programs may target specific issues, such as gang intelligence or drug intelligence. These programs are important and have value despite the lack of specifically defined minimum standards. Collaborative efforts with other criminal justice agencies, such as corrections, parole, and probation, may also result in additional topics in the future.

Program developers are urged to explore the diverse applications of law enforcement intelligence in which training voids exist. In those programs, developers are also urged to adopt the same philosophy and curricular issues described above.