WHEREAS, local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agents and officers engaged in routine police work are an excellent resource to gather information related to all kinds of threats and vulnerabilities that can be applied equally to terrorist threats and crimes in the community (“The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan,” October 2003); and

WHEREAS, it is essential for local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies to be able to quickly access and disseminate relevant information from shared law enforcement databases in a secure manner; and

WHEREAS, traditional, hierarchical intelligence functions need to be reexamined and replaced with cooperative, fluid structures that can collect information and move intelligence to end users more quickly (“Intelligence Led Policing: The New Intelligence Architecture,” September 2005); and

WHEREAS, systems such as the National Drug Pointer Index (NDPIX), which was developed to help federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies investigate drug trafficking organizations and enhance officer safety by preventing duplicate investigations and allowing investigators to quickly establish a link by telephone in cases of common interest, exemplifies the benefits of a structured information sharing system; and

WHEREAS, the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), which began in 1974 and now includes 15 federal agencies along with information sharing agreements with law enforcement agencies from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Canada, has successfully proven the benefits of cooperative information sharing among all levels of law enforcement; now, therefore be it

RESOLVED that the International Association of Chiefs of Police strongly supports the development and expansion of law enforcement information sharing systems such as EPIC and NDPIX, which have successfully demonstrated the ability to timely share relevant law enforcement information across all levels of law enforcement.