As a result of the tragic terrorist attacks in New York City, in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies throughout the country realized there was an immediate need to refocus many of their investigative and intelligence efforts on terrorism. The New York State law enforcement community, consisting of more than 540 agencies and staffed by over 75,000 dedicated law enforcement professionals, was well positioned to gather information, act on the intelligence provided to it, and respond to acts of terrorism.

Traditionally, political and jurisdictional divisions among local, state, and federal agencies affected law enforcement investigations. Agencies ran independent but concurrent investigations without any mechanism or procedures in place to share the information they developed. This unfortunately resulted in the compartmentalization of potentially useful information. In addition, technology gaps between agencies contributed to the inability to share information, preventing the production of viable, actionable intelligence. Following the terrorist events of 9/11, it became evident that such lack of communication—along with a failure to build a centralized and unified intelligence repository to gather, maintain, and analyze intelligence information limited the ability of U.S. law enforcement communities to share intelligence.

Across the United States, detecting and preventing terrorism has become a law enforcement priority. Pursuing terrorists and gathering intelligence data to thwart further terrorist attacks requires that agencies allocate scarce resources. By working alone and relying on individual budgets, agencies limit their ability to detect and prevent terrorism successfully. In addition, few municipal law enforcement agencies can afford to dedicate units to study and track terrorist and other organized criminal activities. Along with financial concerns, “routine” law enforcement caseloads normally take precedence for many municipal agencies. Yet the importance of intelligence and the exchange of information among agencies cannot be dismissed. Proactive intelligence efforts are the key to inhibiting criminal networks—whether those networks are related to terrorism, drugs, or other organized criminal enterprises. For this reason, any information-sharing solution must employ an all-crimes approach.