One province under real-time intelligence

New crime-fighting centre in Surrey draws critique.

Informally known as the new “crime-fighting centre,” the Real Time Intelligence Centre- B.C.’s official opening in Surrey was presented to the public via a live-streaming event held at B.C. RCMP headquarters. The press conference highlights  the successes and benefits of the centre, although there are concerns over civil liberty, and critical evaluations of the opening of such a centre.

RTIC-BC quietly opened and became the first real-time intelligence centre of its kind in Canada, and became operational on June 2014 of last year. It began closing the gaps on the way communications between police and other law enforcement agencies were coordinated. However, its origin lies in a series of committee reports submitted to the city of Surrey, Richmond and the Vancouver police board in February of that year outlining the need for the implementation of the intelligence-led policing centre.

Intelligence-led policing is more of a business model and managerial philosophy, where data analysis and crime intelligence is the objective from which serious crimes and offenders are targeted by police. Under this there is an understanding that police can use crime data and information to combat crime, mainly street level violence and order-maintenance crimes.

As noted in the reports, this type of targeting has been carried out in more than 70 metropolitan regions in the United States, including New York, Boston and L.A.

The justification for establishing such a centre come from a recent study by the Memphis Police Department that outlines serious crime reductions. This, combined with the RCMP also publishing their early successes in the form of suppressing specific life-threatening incidents after monitoring nearly 42,000 “emergency events” shows a lack of evaluation at this point in time for criminology professor Dr. Greg Jenion. Jenion’s current research focuses on crime prevention and community safety.

“They speak of the successes, but I don’t see any evaluation of the successes. You [would] think it would be clear enough for an evaluation study to show it,” says Jenion. Alternatively what is most spoken about is the recent technological advancements and the “Ability to store, search, retrieve and analyze a vast amount of data linking unconnected criminal events, but more information can make the job more difficult not less difficult,” says Jenion.

According to Jenion, when looking at geographic profiling of crime across regions it is clear that “most of the crimes that are solved in terms of even serial homicide are done with good old fashioned police work. The technology only kicks in the very small amount of scenarios that are quite concerning, but don’t really make up the majority of situations that you see.”

“Line level officers, the people on the street, are best able to give you the pulse on the community,” he says. “Data sets are fine, but people still have to interpret that information, and so the more human intelligence you have the better.”

He’s not convinced that digital information is going to be able to overcome or replace human intelligence.

“I’m not discounting the value of digital intelligence, but those numbers, the interpretation of them has to be done from on the ground.”

Now that it is fully deployed, the centre has become the central depository for the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence information from 19 separate databases to all Lower Mainland police officers. This provides real-time support with serious crimes such as murder, home invasions, violent robberies, serial sex offences or gang related shootings. The centre is also staffed not just by RCMP, but also by municipal police services including the Abbotsford Police, Delta Police, New Westminster Police, Vancouver Police and Transit Police Services, along with other law enforcement.

Consequently this means that there has been a breakdown of what Jenion refers to as information silos: there is no longer a separation of intelligence services or organizations.

In this regard, silos provide legal protections because each of these agencies have different legal mandates and responsibilities. So when the agencies come under one umbrella Jenion suggests there is a risk.

“There is an incredible power that can be at anybody’s fingertips, [and] this power may be wielded in a way that is reducing harm for society, something that everybody wants,” says Jenion. “But when it comes to an inappropriate use of the information, or any type of malfeasance that can take place by criminal justice agencies, who is there to make sure that doesn’t happen?”

Similarly RTIC-BC’s mandate also calls for a coordinated response to gangs but, “The number one crime in Surrey is not necessarily gangs at all . . . our problems for violent crime are common assault, stuff like mischief and disturbing the peace,” explains Jenion. “Those are the number-one volume calls and so do you really need high coordination of information and collapsing of silos to deal with . . . some of the major volume crimes in Surrey that really have nothing to do with any of that?”

Jenion is always in support for a coordinated effort to bring in as many resources as possible, to deal with crime reduction and prevention through strategic management. He also believes that high technology or specialized programs is something that is missing. Currently, the funding is shared between municipal (50 per cent), provincial (30 per cent) and federal (20 per cent) governments, with an estimated budget of $5.8-million by this summer. This will result in a fully staffed centre with 17 police officers and 26 civilian staff members (analysts and researchers), set to operate 24-7, 365 days a year.

Only in its first phase, the centre will move into its second and third, encompassing additional police municipalities across B.C. and increasing its annual operating budget to almost $8.6-million by spring 2017.

“We need transparency around the evaluation component of how these things are working or will work,” says Jenion. “. . . the cost benefit analysis built-in to making sure that these millions of dollars is being spent on these programs is actually having the [desired] result.”

Interviews with the RCMP and City of Surrey were unavailable as of press time.