McNamara brought her idea to Downing and Police Chief William J. Bratton. They were immediately supportive, she said, because it played into their existing campaign to transform police officers from traditional crime fighters into intelligence-gatherers.
Bratton, a former New York Police Department chief, was especially enthusiastic, she said, because he had been a pioneer in the use of statistics and standardized reporting to analyze and combat crime trends, a process known as Compstat.
After the LAPD consulted with officials in Washington and civil liberties experts, Bratton issued a special order March 5 that formally required all officers to report incidents "potentially related to foreign or domestic terrorism," using McNamara's program.
By then, the U.S. Directorate of National Intelligence was interested. This month, it dispatched teams of experts to Boston and Chicago to see if the program can be implemented in those cities as a precursor to a much larger rollout. Another team will soon visit Miami.
Maj. Michael Ronczkowski, head of Miami's Homeland Security Bureau, was one of many law enforcement officials who praised the LAPD program at a two-day law enforcement intelligence conference in Los Angeles, which ended Friday.
"It's about time someone at the local level took the initiative to be this proactive," said Ronczkowski, who is also a member of the Major Cities Chiefs Assn.'s Intelligence Commanders Group, a national law enforcement advocacy group. "What L.A. is doing could impact the entire country."
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
