Who collates, analyzes and disseminates intelligence in US Law Enforcement agencies?

Question

In the UK all Police Forces will have a Local Area Intelligence team usually staffed by civilian Police employees but headed by a uniformed Sergeant. The role of the AIT is to gather, process and share intel which could be used for a specific operation, an arrest attempt, or just a general briefing for Officers to be aware of a situation.

Who in the US does this kind of work? Is Police work in the US predominantly intelligence led? If Intel jobs are open to civilian employees where is the best place to find out about recruitment?

Answer 1

Usually this kind of position is held by an officer. I'm sure there are exceptions as there are an awful lot of individual agencies, but most of them have officers, or teams of officers, whose job it is to connect with other agencies, especially federal agencies, regarding intelligence.

For the most part, except for federal enforcement, US law enforcement is not mostly intelligence led. Mostly it is led by pro-active enforcement (low level infractions that then lead to bigger things) and calls from civilians.

In truth, US law enforcement agencies often have much trouble keeping their lines of intelligence organized and well connected, probably because they lack any equivalent of the AIT.