Uniting the thin blue line
Center analyzes data to combat crime, terror
INDIANAPOLIS – In the basement of the state government center, there is a small bank of offices behind a nondescript door with no nameplate or sign.
Inside, a red ceiling light flashes, signaling that a visitor has entered the secure room where police and private analysts hover over computer screens trying to crack the latest criminal or terrorist plot.
Welcome to the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center.
Homeland security concerns prompted a more integrated intelligence network after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Now there are 72 fusion centers around the nation, analyzing and disseminating data and information of all kinds. That is one for every state and others for large urban cities.
“It’s connecting the dots. That’s what the thing really is,” said Sen. Tom Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, a state and national expert on the center. “Fusion centers are the single greatest thing we have done to tie together law enforcement information not only against the criminal element but the terrorist element.”
Indiana’s center has essentially become an arm of Indiana law enforcement – bringing its capabilities to aid investigations from theft to homicide.
Gov. Mitch Daniels authorized the center by executive order in March 2006. That order said intelligence analysts confront a vast array of information, most of which might appear meaningless.
“However, any single fact may prove essential once it is combined with other information,” he said. “An intelligence fusion center will enhance the analysis process by creating a structure that agencies can use to share information and combine their efforts more effectively.”
The center started in December 2006 within the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
It has 31 full-time staffers and two part-time.
Some, like Executive Director Jeff Wardlow, are state employees. Others are assigned to the center from other agencies, such as the FBI, Transportation Security Administration, and Marion County Sheriff’s Department They are joined by workers from the Department of Correction, the Indiana National Guard, the Indiana State Police, the Department of Natural Resources and local campus police.
Wardlow acknowledged that police from outside central Indiana don’t do long-term stints at the center because of travel.
There are also private sector analysts on contract. Previously those analysts were from EG&G Technical Services of California. The most recent contract with EG&G called for payment of $1.1 million in the recently ended fiscal year, but a new contract is being drafted.
The budget for the center is about $1.8 million. Of that, $1 million comes from federal grants. Much of the state money goes to buying software and licensing key databases.
The center runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives about 150 requests a day for assistance from other agencies or law enforcement.
For instance, police around the state can get limited information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles database.
But the fusion center can go further, gathering old pictures of a suspect and using facial recognition software to see whether the person has ever used an alias.
Essentially, fusion center employees are experts at tunneling through data to find key information and recognizing trends and patterns in crime.
Wardlow said Indianapolis police recently gave the center only a first name, month of birth and race as information on a suspect in a double homicide.
The analyst ran the information until connecting it to an unrelated crash in an old vehicle. Within two hours the man was arrested. He later committed suicide in his jail cell.
The fusion center also has been trying to work with businesses. For instance, an official from a downtown Indianapolis hotel had pictures of a person stealing computer equipment and high-end luggage from the hotel. The official posted the photos to a private sector-incident report system run by the fusion center.
A nearby hotel provided the posted pictures to all hotel staff. Within 24 hours, a staff member recognized the person, who was later caught trying to steal computer equipment from a guest at check-in.
So sometimes the fusion center and its network help catch criminals and solve crimes.
Other times, old-fashioned police work – and citizen involvement – gets the bad guy, but the fusion center connects that arrest to a larger problem.
That’s what happened in a 2008 Fort Wayne case.
An attentive citizen reported a suspicious vehicle in a parking lot related to a possible theft, leading to the arrest of Gregory Paul Fishner of Georgia on felony theft charges.
A detective gathered information on Fishner and his suspected habits and sent that information to the center. Within hours, analysts at the center were matching information linking Fishner to crimes throughout the country.
He received a four-year prison sentence in Indiana and could be charged in other states.
Going too far?
Nationally, there have been concerns about whether fusion centers are violating citizens’ privacy rights. The American Civil Liberties Union put together a report on the issue in late 2007.
“In a democracy, the collection and sharing of intelligence information – especially information about American citizens and other residents – need to be carried out with the utmost care,” the report said. “That is because more and more, the amount of information available on each one of us is enough to assemble a very detailed portrait of our lives. And because security agencies are moving toward using such portraits to profile how ‘suspicious’ we look.”
Some examples of concerns include racial profiling, including a Texas fusion center alerting law enforcement at a college football game to focus on suspicious people of Middle Eastern descent even though they had no specific corroborating intelligence.
The Missouri fusion center made news in 2009 for targeting supporters of third-party candidates as potential militia members.
Wardlow said the Indiana fusion center has had no similar situations.
“We need to be transparent about what we are doing. We have standards that are protecting the confidentiality, civil rights and privacy of our citizens,” Wyss said. “That makes us different than the rest of the world.”
Wyss said control of the center was recently moved from the Department of Homeland Security to the Indiana State Police because of its growing focus on general crime and local law enforcement needs.