Prerequisite: None

Every day, law enforcement officers at all levels of government—state, local, tribal, and federal—observe behaviors that are suspicious or receive such reports from concerned civilians, private security, and other government agencies. Today, “connecting the dots” between these suspicious activity reports before an incident occurs has become an integral and imperative job for America’s law enforcement community.

 

The Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI) was created to significantly improve the sharing of SAR information between agencies by setting and evaluating standards for suspicious behavior observations, privacy protection, incident analysis, and reporting of SARs that may have a potential link with terrorism. After one year of experience and evaluation with an operational pilot involving 7 major cities, 5 states, DHS and the FBI, this panel presentation will provide an overview of the NSI, discuss important successes, lessons learned, challenges and recommendations for moving forward.

Learning Objectives:

• Relate to the lessons learned, challenges and successes that have been observed over the past year as the NSI was deployed at pilot sites

• Understand the goals and objectives of the NSI

• Understand the plans for the NSI has the program moves forward and appreciate its potential to connect the dots