Best Practices Leveraging Computer-Aided Dispatch to Enhance Suspicious Activity Reporting was developed to provide law enforcement and fusion centers with promising practices and recommendations on how to develop or enhance the process of querying Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) data to derive or develop information, tips and leads, or suspicious activity. This includes suspicious activity reports (SARs) meeting the requirements outlined in the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. The guidance in this resource will enable agencies and centers to incorporate CAD data into the review and analysis of SARs; develop search queries to identify potential indicators of emerging threats (validated against prior events), such as targeted violence, by aggregating and reviewing CAD information with other available information to identify patterns; and share threat reports derived from review and analysis. The recommendations explain how to utilize the tools and resources necessary to build this capability and offer examples of how centers and agencies may work together to exchange such information. The framework outlined can be adapted, scaled, and applied to a variety of organizational models.
This resource is the result of research and meetings with law enforcement and criminal intelligence experts, and site visits with law enforcement agencies and fusion centers. It was published through support from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.