Much has happened at the N-DEx Program Office since the 2013 Police Chief article featuring the N‑DEx system.¹ As the United States’ premier no-cost criminal justice information sharing system, N-DEx has experienced a staggering rate of growth in agency participation. Data contributors have increased from 3,850 in 2013 to approximately six thousand law enforcement agencies today. The system provides access to more than 600 million searchable records, including federated records from partnerships with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the Interstate Identification Index (III), and the Next Generation Identification (NGI). The N-DEx system provides local, state, tribal, and federal users with federal case files, including data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the Bureau of Prisons (BOP); and the United States Marshals Service (USMS). The N‑DEx system is quickly becoming the preferred system for cross-jurisdictional data and research, providing more than 70,000 registered criminal justice and law enforcement users with the information they need to connect the dots and enhance investigations.

The mission of the N-DEx Program Office is to support the information sharing system that enables criminal justice agencies to search, link, and analyze local, state, tribal, and federal records. The N-DEx system provides tools to accomplish this mission, correlating records from different data contributors, and linking seemingly unrelated data with tools such as Link Visualization and Geo Visualization. These capabilities support the larger FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s mission to equip its law enforcement, national security, and intelligence community partners with the criminal justice information they need to protect the United States while preserving civil liberties.

A prime example of realizing the mission of the CJIS Division involves the case of a fugitive from justice who attempted to evade capture by moving to another state. In September 2015, Texas Department of Public Safety analysts were in the process of adding an absconder who was convicted of sexual assault on a child to their Top 10 Most Wanted list. As part of the process, they were conducting exhaustive searches of various databases, including a search of the FBI’s N-DEx System. They found an N-DEx record from the New York State Police, which listed the subject as a complainant in a missing person report from just a few weeks prior. Using the address in the record, San Francisco, California, Sheriff’s Department deputies, who were cross-designated as Deputy United States Marshals, conducted a raid at the address and took the subject into federal custody. If it were not for the record in the N-DEx system, the subject likely would have remained at large. This success story received an FBI N-DEx 2016 Excellence in Information Sharing award.

The N-DEx system also provides unique capabilities that allow officers and investigators to sift through large amounts of data in less time. The Batch Query capability accepts a properly formatted Excel or comma separated value (CSV) file and conducts hundreds or even thousands of searches of the N‑DEx system at one time. In a recent case assistance project, one department obtained an 80 percent hit rate on a search of sexual offenders, providing hundreds of leads and potentially dozens of actions that would not have been possible without the N-DEx system. These investigations are still ongoing.

Another unique capability of the N-DEx system allows users to set subscriptions on subjects or items of interest and receive email or system notifications when new records are entered into the system or other investigators search for that same person or item. This feature puts investigators in touch with each other across jurisdictional boundaries and allows for the coordination of seemingly separate investigations.

Multiple queries of the N-DEx system can offer unusual opportunities to solve and prevent crime. An excellent example of this involves the 2016 FBI N-DEx Success Story of the Year. On December 13, 2015, the Route 66 Casino Express in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was robbed. Two male subjects entered the casino, pointed a loaded firearm at one of the cashiers and demanded money. Meanwhile, a female accomplice stayed outside in the get-away vehicle. Minutes prior to the robbery, the unknown female accomplice swiped a casino rewards card to pay for fuel at one of the nearby pumps. The Pueblo of Laguna Police Department and the FBI were called to investigate. With only the possible name and date of birth of the female subject, an investigator with the Pueblo of Laguna Police Department contacted the Rocky Mountain Information Network (RMIN), based out of Phoenix, Arizona. The agent spoke to a criminal intelligence analyst, asking her to find out what she could on the female driver. By conducting a targeted person search of the N-DEx system, three records were discovered, one of which revealed a social security number of the female subject. A subsequent search of the N-DEx system using that social security number revealed 19 New Mexico records submitted to the N-DEx system by the Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX) System, a large law enforcement information sharing partner administered by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). These records bore various names, including criminal associates of the female subject. The information gathered from the N-DEx system was used by two other RMIN intelligence research analysts to run full background checks and create criminal information packages on all the subjects. Subsequent investigation by the Pueblo of Laguna Police Department investigator, using the volume of detailed information gathered through the use of the N-DEx system and partner systems, led to three arrests and two confessions in the case. The investigator stated, “The true heroes in the case were the intelligence analysts who provided us with the information and the direction in which to proceed.”²

In the digital age of the 21st century, it is easy to quickly get lost in all the options available for obtaining relevant information. The FBI’s N-DEx system was designed to bring together as much relevant criminal justice and law enforcement data as possible and make it available with just one search. This level of information sharing serves as a force multiplier, allowing officers, detectives, and analysts to obtain more information in less time. An excellent example of the power of the N‑DEx system was recently realized by an analyst working on a credit card fraud case.

In January 2015, an intelligence analyst with the New York State Intelligence Center came across an “Attempt to Identify” bulletin from Spotsylvania, Virginia. A group of subjects used cloned credit cards at a liquor store, and two subjects presented New York identification cards. The investigator was able to identify one New York subject, but had only partial identifying information on the second. The intelligence analyst checked New York resources first, with negative results, and then conducted a search of the FBI’s N‑DEx System. She found that the unidentified subject was involved in another incident in Virginia, which also revealed two new subjects. Additional searches of the two new subjects in the N-DEx system revealed that they, too, were involved in incidents in other states (Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Maryland). Searches of the new incidents added additional subjects, and the case continued to grow. With each new N‑DEx record the analyst found, she contacted the record-owning agency and spoke with the officers involved, asking if she could use their case information in her Target Intelligence Packet and whether they had any additional information that was not contained in the N‑DEx record. In the end, the intelligence analyst uncovered one large 16-person credit card fraud ring that was based in Far Rockaway, New York, and specifically targeted liquor and cigarette stores. The subjects were renting cars for months at a time and hauling the low-tax liquor and cigarettes back to New York to be sold. She tied together 32 incidents in eight states, writing a 22‑page Target Intelligence Packet that detailed the subjects, provided a timeline of the incidents, and resulted in information sharing among 21 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. The intelligence analyst states,

 I developed this case nearly exclusively with N‑DEx, and without the system, this case would not have been nearly as successful. N‑DEx truly is an invaluable resource, and I have had many case successes that otherwise would not have happened without data from N-DEx.³

 This success story was recently awarded an FBI N-DEx 2016 Excellence in Information Sharing Award.

There are two methods of access to the N-DEx system. The first method involves using the FBI’s Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP) at www.cjis.gov and becoming a member of the state or federal “Sub SIG” (Special Interest Group). Once a user is accepted to the group, the N-DEx system icon becomes available to the user, allowing direct access to the N‑DEx system. This process is managed through state or federal CJIS systems officers (CSOs) or their delegates as they approve and manage their members and grant access privileges, such as N-DEx system roles and leveraged data sources the user can access. The second method of access usually involves large agencies or organizations who already manage their users according to CJIS security requirements. For qualifying systems, the agency can become an “identity provider” to the N-DEx system, allowing their existing users to access the N‑DEx system without having to remember another username and password.

The N-DEx Program Office also offers assistance for agencies who wish to become data contributors to the N-DEx system. Interested agencies can access the N-DEx system guidelines and standards for producing records for submission, or they can work with staff from the N‑DEx Program Office for assistance in data submission. The N‑DEx Program Office technical staff can map data elements from an agency’s records management system to the N-DEx standard and create an “adapter” that automatically packages and submits data via secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) to the N-DEx system at regular intervals. At this time, the N-DEx Program Office is able to offer integration assistance at no cost to agencies, so if an agency is not already submitting the data either directly or through a state system, there is no reason to delay starting this process. Interested agencies can contact the N-DEx help desk by telephone at (304) 625-0555, or by email at ndex@Lego. Additional information is available at www.fbi.gov/ndex.

The N-DEx Program Office will continue to seek opportunities to partner with local, state, tribal, and federal agencies to contribute their data and to assist interested law enforcement and criminal justice personnel with obtaining access to the N-DEx system. As a CJIS Division system, the management of the N-DEx system is shared with the criminal justice community through the advisory policy board (APB) process. As Acting N-DEx Unit Chief, John C. Quinlan, states, “We are very interested in proceeding further toward the goal of creating the nation’s premier criminal justice information sharing system, in step with our criminal justice and law enforcement partners.”⁴ Together, the FBI and U.S. law enforcement agencies have the ability to use data to make the United States a safer place.

Notes:

¹ Charlie Bush, “Enhancing Criminal Justice and Homeland Security Capabilities: N-DEx Fulfilling Its Vision to Support Law Enforcement,” The Police Chief 80 (February 2013): 34–37.

² David Clendenin (investigator, Pueblo of Laguna Police Department), February 16, 2016

³ Candace Burnha (intelligence analyst, New York State Police), January 20, 2016.

⁴ John Quinlan (acting unit chief, FBI CJIS Division N-DEx Program Office), March 22, 2016.