By Milica D. Djekic
The crime may happen anywhere. The Police Forces would always get interested for the findings about the crime and they would usually put a lot of time and effort in order to understand what has occurred at some concerning spot. The easiest way to obtain the information about the crime is to interview someone being aware about such an event. By definition, the witness is a person who is capable to see, hear or experience some criminality and on the other side – the victim is anyone being disadvantaged with such a situation. So, who is the informant, so far? The informant is anyone dealing with the finding about the crime and that person is not necessarily someone with the good reputation or well-developed legal status in a community, but rather someone who could be involved into some criminal activity. Anyhow, such an individual could choose to contact the authorities in order to share his findings about the crime. Indeed, all those claims should get proved and if there is no evidence for such a story, that source would not get any status within the criminal investigation. Through our research, we would get some information that the Law Enforcement would need to make an agreement with the informant in order to obligate that person to cope with some requirements. On the other hand, another research finding would suggest that the Police Forces would not make any promises about the case before they obtain their task completely. However, we would admit that we have never made questions to any intelligence source, so we cannot accurately claim what has gotten the best practice, so far.
The fact is the informant service could give some effort to the entire investigation, but those guys are not that significant within the total criminal case. In other words, the informant task is not that exciting and spectacular as so many Hollywood blockbusters would show, so if anyone believes he could get the adrenalin doping doing so – he could be quite flawed. The experience would indicate that there is a lot of paperwork with such an arrangement and someone honestly serving to that purpose should get aware that he would be so busy on a daily basis or whenever he selects and such an effort would get somehow correlated with the certain risk to his security and probably life. Apparently, the Police Departments should provide the full support to those people and if they deal with the best practice those guys would feel that they are in the safe hands. In the practice, it’s possible to provide some reporting at your own convenience either if you are in some home or business environment. The police officer being the interviewer in such a case would cope with the skill to collect any intelligence getting sent through the communications means. In our opinion, such a scenario could appear as the quite handy one, but the fact is the informant could expose his life to the threat doing such a job. Also, the informant could count on the deep coverage wherever he is which may include some public places, as well.
The modern policing would so widely deal with the intelligence-led investigation paradigm which got introduced as the response to nowadays terrorist challenges. In addition, the both – people being under the case or those getting engaged into the investigation would receive some intelligence in the information exchange senses in order to provide some clues to the investigators. Those findings would get carefully analysed and every single day the policing staff would receive the new instructions how to coordinate that scheme. The investigative process could take some time and the informants as well as the policing employees could suggest that their career is somehow effort investing, but everyone would agree that such a contribution is worth so! The tendency in the policing would suggest that the majority of the Law Enforcement officers should try to get specialised into the servant leaders. This is so sacrificing requirement and the point is that the nowadays good guys would look to meet the other people’s needs not caring about their own well-being and selflessly giving themselves to the defence system. From the perspective of the Law Enforcement agencies – the informants are the brave folks who would dare to talk with the authorities about the crime putting their own lives on the risk. In other words, such a service is greatly appreciated even if the identities of those men and women would never get publically known.
It’s the myth that anyone would get the direct link with the authorities doing the informant’s task. Apparently, there would be some communications means, but no serious officer would put anyone under the risk while the case is ongoing. In the essence, it may seem as quite delusional believing that the Police would share any findings about the case as it is in progress and it’s far less feasible that the investigators would not take into consideration the distraction demands. There are the methods to gain the rapport from your interviewees, but no authorities coping with the modern policing concept would make the touch with anyone during the investigation. Anyone who would want to talk about the crime should contact the Police reporting what has happened and even then the Law Enforcement would not talk to anyone so openly. Practically, there are the ways to collect the intelligence relying on much sophisticated methodologies and procedures which would make the risk getting connected with the case being better manageable.
Finally, the intelligence-led policing got the product of the novel millennium and as the experience would demonstrate it would serve its purpose quite well. In our belief, the coming decades would definitely bring the greatly researched and developed concepts that would be so confirmed previous experiences from the practice possibly looking for some adjustments as well as innovations, so far. In conclusion, the informant task would undoubtedly deal with some risk and it’s up to the good procedures and policies as well as the best practice to reduce such a threat and make such an experience getting safe and convenient at the same time!
About the Author
Milica D. Djekic is an Independent Researcher from Subotica, Republic of Serbia. She received her engineering background from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade. She writes for some domestic and overseas presses and she is also the author of the book “The Internet of Things: Concept, Applications and Security” being published in 2017 with the Lambert Academic Publishing. Milica is also a speaker with the BrightTALK expert’s channel and Cyber Security Summit Europe being held in 2016 as well as CyberCentral Summit 2019 being one of the most exclusive cyber defence events in Europe. She is the member of an ASIS International since 2017 and contributor to the Cyber Defense Magazine since 2014 and the Australian Cyber Security Magazine since 2018. Milica’s research efforts are recognized with Computer Emergency Response Team for the European Union (CERT-EU) and EASA European Centre for Cybersecurity in Aviation (ECCSA). Her fields of interests are cyber defence, technology and business. Milica is a person with disability.
