Law Enforcement Priorities in the Era of New Digital Tools

The Innovation Law Enforcement Dialogue practitioners’ network (I-LEAD) builds upon the work of the European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (ENLETS) that brings EU law enforcement together to share best practices, activate co-creation and stimulate research for operational purposes. I-LEAD’s key focus is to contribute to the development of new and existing crime fighting capabilities of LEAs across Europe. This will be undertaken via a series of bespoke practitioner workshops that have been exclusively designed to identify and define end-user priorities in 25 subject-specific areas of law enforcement. The findings from the workshops will be used to identify “fit for purpose” solutions within the marketplace and/or direct research and innovation within academia, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and/or those organisations within the security industry environment. The overall results of this work will effectively contribute to the development and enhancement, where relevant and required, of the existing policing “crime fighting tool kit”. I-LEAD will also examine and recommend opportunities for standardisation and joint procurement, concentrating on the technical, human, organisational and regulatory elements. In this chapter, we present a summary of the I-LEAD findings based on the successful establishment of five workshops that brings together 78 experts from operational law enforcement across 21 EU Member States. The workshop areas are related to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Mobility for Officers, People Trafficking, Intelligence Analysis and Technologies in DNA.