The LAPD Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau will be using the new US$1 million system to gather, collate, track, analyze and distribute intelligence information, including counterterrorism tips and leads. The system also will be used to analyze data related to organized crime, street gangs and money laundering.

The system, which uses data mining, analysis and visualization tools from Memex Inc., will allow about 80 LAPD officers to search multiple intelligence databases simultaneously and can provide proactive notifications and e-mail alerts to officers when patterns are identified, said Bob Fox, officer in charge of the analytical section in the major-crimes division of the counterterrorism bureau.

'One of the criticisms of the 9/11 Commission's report is agencies failed to connect the dots, bring pieces of information together that possibly would have prevented the 9/11 attacks,' Fox said. '[Today], when somebody sits down at a computer and starts trying to check information, there are too many places to look. Memex will allow us to go to sources of information ... and with one entry search all of those sources to see if there are any linkages or connections to the information we are looking at.'

Now, for example, if a citizen calls the department to report suspicious activity by a neighbor, officers have to search several different data sources for the person's name to see if he or she is in the system, he said.

'The more data sources you are required to look at, the more opportunity there is to miss something or forget something,' Fox said.