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Findings and Recommendations of the Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Support and Implementation Project

NCJ Number
306391
Date Published
October 2008
Length
39 pages
Annotation

This report seeks to establish national guidelines that will allow for timely sharing of Suspicious Activity Reporting information, providing sections on executive leadership, privacy and civil rights protections, the Suspicious Activity Reporting process, standard reporting format and data collection codes, training and community outreach, and technology.

Abstract

The purpose of this report and its recommendations is to describe the all-crimes approach to gathering, processing, reporting, analyzing, and sharing of Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR process) by the local police agency. The various sections of the report focus on each of the six major findings from the SAR Support and Implementation Project, and they include: executive leadership, the need to recognize importance of implementing a SAR process; privacy and civil liberties protections, implementing an agency privacy policy; gathering, processing, reporting, analyzing, and sharing of suspicious activity (SAR Process), the identification of existing SAR processes to determine what needs development, and the incorporation of national guidelines into standard operating procedures; standard reporting format and data collection codes, institutionalizing the SAR process within agencies; training and community outreach, training all agency personnel and educating communities on the SAR process; and technology, partnering with others and connecting to information sharing networks. The three Appendixes include: a list of project team members and participants; Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) special order regarding SAR; and a sample of LAPD terrorism-related CCAD Codes.