Police Receive Basic Intelligence Training

A “Basic Intelligence Analysis Training” for officers attached to the Belize Police Department concluded today at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza. The training, which is being coordinated through the Central American Regional Security Initiative, CARSI, is designed to improve the officers’ abilities to analyze data gathered from their communities. But the course takes it a step further and officers were trained on how to use the data to respond and prevent crime. News Five spoke today with Intelligence Analyst, Derrick Stivers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was an instructor of the training.

Derrick Stivers, Intelligence Analyst, F.B.I.

“We’ve covered a wide range of topics this week. Intelligence analysis is all about trying to predict with what might be coming next. So we try to take a look at historical data and what is currently going on and try to predict the next threat so that we can prevent it from happening in the first place.”

Duane Moody

“Now we know that to an extent it is really about getting these officers to think differently or think as a criminal would. Talk to us about that.”

Bob Gibson

Derrick Stivers

“So one of the key parts of being an intelligence analyst is to think critically. As you said, thinking like a criminal would to try to anticipate what they would do is key, but as people we rely a lot on our assumptions. And so we want to make sure that we are supporting our assumptions and keeping a structured process for coming to our conclusions.”

Derrick Stivers

Bob Gibson, Coordinator, National Narcotics & Law Enforcement Affairs/CARSI

“There seem to be very responsive to the F.B.I. instructors that we have here. And they were telling us that basically it wasn’t like they weren’t doing any of this. They were already doing some of it, but they didn’t appreciate what they were doing and they didn’t know how to formalize that process, doing it as an organized process—put it that way—and it just makes it much more effective by putting it in this context.”

Derrick Stivers

“We were very impressed with the level of knowledge and skill the officers came to the class with already. They were already producing good reports, forecasting data and looking at trends that have been going on.”