Police Tactical Units and Offender-Focused Policing

Written By Elizabeth Berger

Author: Elizabeth Berger

In recent years (and specifically 2020), many U.S. cities have been plagued by large increases in homicides and gun violence. In response, specialized police tactical units are increasingly being used to address these critical and high-risk situations.

Police tactical units are often trained to handle incidents with a high potential for violence (e.g., protests, shootings). The units are often equipped with specific training for officers that help them focus more on specific problems, such as neutralizing dangerous or mentally ill persons, picking out the right targets who appear the most dangerous, and intervening in high-risk situations.

These specialized police tactical units often use data-driven policing to proactively target specific locations or people and fully assess the potential dangerousness of an incident.  Active threat assessment is another skill that can be applied on the scene to enhance an officer’s ability to identify dangerous people.

In this post, we are going to describe different tactical units and how employing training in active threat assessment skills can enhance your police tactical units.

Data-Driven Policing

Data-driven policing is an umbrella term that covers various predictive policing strategies, such as hot spots policing and offender-focused policing. These approaches, sometimes referred to as intelligence-led policing, collect and examine data/intel in advance regarding places and people. Analyzing crime data and intelligence on certain people and places can proactively inform where resources should be targeted. Further, when an officer has a better idea of what to expect in certain types of encounters, he can better handle them.

Offender-Focused Policing

Offender-focused police tactical units use data/intel to identify and target certain people referred to as “hot offenders” (e.g., ‘frequent fliers’ of the justice system, people affiliated with gangs) in advance. These police tactical units often use social networks, digital evidence, analysis of crime data, and other intel to predict who prolific offenders are and the threat they pose to the public.

Some commonly known offender-focused police tactical units target gangs, gun violence, and critical incidents. To enhance the training for police tactical units, officers can receive training on active threat assessment, which further enhances their ability to further zone in on the most dangerous offenders while in a high-risk area.

Offender-focused policing approaches have been evaluated with some promising effects, including those focused on gang violence and gun violence. To learn more about the efficacy of offender-focused policing and related strategies, see research from the UK College of Policing and George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.

Active Threat Assessment

If officers target the wrong people, it can damage relationships with the community. Thus, it is important that an officer continues actively assessing threats while on the scene. Intelligence-led policing can help officers prepare for potentially threatening situations; however, active threat assessment strongly complements this approach by enhancing awareness of threat indicators in real-time.  It can also help officers control and de-escalate volatile situations.

Learn more about the application of active threat assessment by checking out this blog post about identifying individuals carrying concealed weapons at a peaceful protest.

Check out our courses page to learn more about our available online training. You and your team can learn to identify potentially threatening individuals in high-risk areas. Keeping you safe while ensuring you target the true threats.

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Elizabeth Berger

Elizabeth Berger is a published author and research methodologist specializing in policing. Prior to joining the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in April 2021, she resided in the D.C. area and worked as a researcher, freelance writer, and translational scientist, both independently and in partnerships with other organizations including the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing. In addition, Ms. Berger was a Research Associate at the Police Executive Research Forum, where she designed and led applied research projects with several law enforcement agencies. She holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in Criminal Justice with concentrations in Statistics from Niagara University in Lewiston, NY.

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