How to Catch a Flasher…
It was Friday night, just after midnight, when the cab delivered me to my apartment building after a night on the town with friends. Out of nowhere I heard a voice say, “Can you tell me how to get to Broadway?” What? What did he just say? He repeated, “Can you tell me how to get to Broadway?” I was momentarily speechless. My heart pounded. How did this man get into my building? Did he really just slip in the front door without my noticing? Are you kidding — standing here with your zipper down and pants wide open? Was he pranking me or was this something sinister? My house key was just a click away from opening up my safe, private world to this stranger. I was flooded with a mass of thoughts. He’s not very big, he can’t hurt me. I’m sure my neighbors will hear me if I scream. But in my dreams my screams don’t make any sound. And then I thought about all of the police reports I’d read over the years as an analyst that frustrated me. Reports of women accosted by men, encounters similar to this one, but on a running trail, in a parking lot, or at a playground. Yet so often, the women chose not to file charges. They were not prepared to be called a victim for whatever their personal reason might be. I suddenly dug into my purse searching for my cell phone and was surprised to hear my voice say to him, “No you don’t.” My adrenaline quickly erased my fear and I was determined that he would not get away with this brazen offense. He backed down the stairs and raced out of the lobby as I gave chase. His car was down the block ready for a quick getaway. I gave the 9–1–1 dispatcher his license plate, but when the police arrived minutes later I learned I’d gotten it wrong.
I went to work the next day, resolved to figure out the correct license plate number. When I succeeded in finding the vehicle I eventually found the suspect who I positively identified as the same man that later gave me many sleepless nights with the “what if’s.”
Sure, I had a distinct advantage in wrapping up this series of events perpetrated by this man for the investigating detective. After all, I was there, an eyewitness to the crime, but with the extra gift of having police resources, insight and determination.
In this time of comprehensive scrutiny to American policing, an objective oriented analyst can help direct police enforcement actions to be offender focused, rather than the high visibility enforcement or saturation patrols that can leave a negative impact on the people in the community that are not involved in the offense. Thus the analyst can not only increase the effectiveness of the officers, but help shape the long term perception of the department amongst the community. Analysts can be invaluable as force multipliers.
Many local police analysts are confined to a very traditional role which often includes report review, statistics, charts and crime mapping. However, analysts with access to a variety of analytical tools can provide very different insights and skills to the police organization. When an analyst is free to pursue avenues outside of their traditional role they can increase the effectiveness of investigators and decision makers, both tactically and strategically, in matters of local crime and the nation’s security.
While my unraveling of the juxtaposed license plate happens frequently by officers and dispatchers, I succeeded mostly because I was not locked into a defined role. Not only does expanding capabilities make for a better analyst, but very importantly, it also allows cops to do more “cop things”. When an analyst can shoulder some of their tasks and expound on it, it makes the cop more efficient, productive and successful.
Analysts can do most of the tasks that detectives do with the exception of having the authority to make an arrest and serve a warrant. (In fact, there are a growing number of municipalities that are hiring non-sworn civilians as detectives.) For example, many analysts perform link analysis as a standard analytic function in an investigation. Now if you also certify them to perform cell phone forensics, a task typically done by detectives or crime technicians, you have then greatly increased the scope of their analytical capabilities, as well as the potential to create a more advanced and comprehensive product. You have now combined the analytical skill set of linking connections with the rich data source of relationships provided by phone calls and phonebooks.
General Stanley McChrystal (Ret.), a four-star general and former head of the U.S. coalition in Iraq, was known for embedding his analysts into his military operations. He claims they significantly increased the overall efficiency of the teams while enhancing the team’s sense of shared purpose. By taking analysts out of their isolated office and placing them in an ops center revealing the immediate threats, intelligence gaps, and the sacrifice and the end state, he created a cohesive team with much greater effectiveness. This became integral to the working model he stood up and the phrase he coined, “building a team of teams”.
*Following my incident, my offender accosted three separate women that night. Unfortunately, their encounters got physical. He was sentenced to probation. Several years later, he was arrested in a more aggressively prosecutorial county and he is now serving 15 years in prison for sexual assault.
