Intelligence and Analytical Approaches for the Crime Gang Terrorism Nexus

Speakers: Dr. John P. Sullivan, Lieutenant (Retired), Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Instructor, Safe Communities Institute, University of Southern California Dr. Nathan P. Jones, Associate Professor, Security Studies, College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University Intelligence is essential to understanding, anticipating, and interdicting transnational organized crime, gang violence, and terrorism. These intersectional illicit activities demand crosscutting, multilateral intelligence to support prevention, enforcement, and ultimately prosecution of the spectra of complex interaction among a range of non-state actors—including criminal enterprises, mafias, gangs, and criminal armed groups (CAGs), and insurgents— and terrorists. These activities have numerous interlocking motivations among a range of actors across multiple potential jurisdictions. These actions range from street crime, through extortion and street violence to further criminal enterprises, through political and insurgent objectives. The intersection between criminal and political objectives results in a range of operational challenges including high intensity crime, riots, street violence (at the level of civil strife) to criminal insurgency and terrorism (approaching the levels of non-international armed conflict). Multiagency, multijurisdictional (and multilateral) intelligence to support a range of civil and military counter-gang, counter-insurgency, and counter-terrorism operations are essential. This presentation will discuss the range of intelligence challenges and approaches (including fusion centers, terrorism early warning, and analysis/synthesis approaches and tools such as transaction analysis, intelligence preparation for operations (IPO), social network analysis (SNA), and automated open source early warning tools and datasets to support a range of analytical activities, information-sharing, and the production of intelligence.