Profile: Natalie Morgan – Intelligence Analyst
Natalie joined Cheshire Constabulary in 2008 after completing a
degree in forensics and working for two years as a project manager.
The organisational skills she learnt in her previous post have been
vital in helping catch and prevent criminals.
She said: “We have to be extremely organised in how we manage
data. That is one of the key attributes you have to have. We have
vast amounts of information at times and we have to make sure that
we’ve looked at everything and make sure we don’t miss something
out.
“In an operation when there is a lot going on, there are a lot
of officers dealing with a certain area. We have to be able to
understand the whole of the case and have an overview of
everything, so that we can piece it all together, highlight any
discrepancies in statements, things in the timeline that don’t add
up, or any intelligence gaps where we need to do further work.
“From the information that we have gathered we will state the
facts, but then our job is to make an inference or prediction of
what might happen or conclusion of what we suspect has happened. We
have to go beyond the realms of fact and make educated guesses
about what could happen.”
Natalie undertook two accreditation courses when she joined the
force to equip her fully to do the job, and has since completed
several optional training courses to improve her skills.
She continued: “There’s two areas to our job. We have a
strategic side and an operational side. The strategic side is more
long-term and we are all assigned a crime desk. I concentrate on
doorstep crime.
“Every day I scan what has happened across the county looking at
anything related to rogue traders or distraction crimes. I’ll look
for any patterns or emerging trends, any vehicles that might be
linked to the crimes and try to develop our intelligence in this
area.”
But the role also has a pro-active element, which can help
police officers who are investigating crimes.
She added: “Sometimes if I see there is an incident on the
system that I think I can help out with, I will contact the
investigating officer to see if they would like any assistance. If
they do, I can do some research and hopefully provide them with
more information. We want to promote what we can add to the
strategic side of policing.
The Constabulary’s team of intelligence analysts identify and
prioritise potential threats to the people of Cheshire. That could
be anything from a particular type of crime that is on the increase
to a specific threat against an individual. Their work involves
studying and making sense of a variety of intelligence relating to
operations, major incidents and serious crime.
An analyst will normally have about three operations ongoing at
any given time. In addition to this, each analyst maintains
intelligence on a specialist area of policing, such as car crime,
counter terrorism or doorstep crime.
Whatever the main issue may be at a particular time,
intelligence analysts are expected to be examining it in great
detail, or have already done so and raised it with senior officers
as an emerging trend.
The analysts are responsible for looking at a piece of
intelligence and finding out: who, what, why, when, when and how?
They also try to establish ‘so what?’, which relates to why the
intelligence is being provided and whether it is important.
This might include attending the scene of a crime to get a
better insight into a piece of intelligence.
They then provide a briefing to a Senior Investigating Officer
on the basis of their findings. The analysts have to understand
every aspect of policing and criminal activity, distil all the
information they encounter and provide recommendations which can
help officers make the right decisions to tackle crime in
Cheshire.