Cape CopCast
Welcome to "The Cape CopCast," the official podcast of the Cape Coral Police Department.
Hosted by Officer Mercedes Simonds, and Lisa Greenberg from our Public Affairs team, this podcast dives into the heart of Cape Coral PD's public safety, community initiatives, and the inner workings of our police department. Each episode brings you insightful discussions, interviews with key community figures, and expert advice on safety.
Cape CopCast
Crime Analyst Hannah Esham on Intelligence & Innovation in Law Enforcement
Have you ever heard of a Crime Analyst? Join us on the Cape CopCast as we explore their role in solving and preventing crime with Hannah Esham.
She talks to hosts Lisa Greenberg and Officer Mercedes Simonds about how Crime Analysts use the Tactical Intelligence and Analytics Center to work closely with detectives. Hannah offers an insider's perspective on how analysts provide invaluable support to detectives, using tools like license plate readers and social media to track and prevent criminal activity. Her journey, sparked by her pivotal internship with the Clearwater Police Department, highlights the essential role of crime analysts as the silent, strategic forces behind successful investigations.
Discover how sharing intel among agencies and the digital footprints left by suspects are pivotal in today's law enforcement landscape. Through real-world examples, Hannah illustrates how her team operates proactively, distributing critical bulletins and safety information that can make or break an investigation. Explore the fascinating intersection of technology and crime fighting, and learn what it takes to thrive in this dynamic field from someone at the forefront of modern crime analysis.
Welcome back to the Cape Cop cast. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa.
Speaker 2:Greenberg and I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the Public Affairs Office and today we have one of our crime analysts, Hannah, on.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to say your last name.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, eshem.
Speaker 1:Eshem. That was going to be my guess. So we have crime analyst Hannah Eshem with us today. Thank you for coming on and taking the time. I know you're busy, so we appreciate it. To start things off, what is a crime analyst so?
Speaker 3:the easiest way to explain it for someone who does not know, has no law enforcement experience, is kind of like a detective without a badge or a gun, in simple terms. But in more technical terms, we assist in investigations. We do a lot of background work for our detectives in locating people. Addresses history.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because I think people think of like a crime occurring and they think of the detective solving the case, but there's a lot of work that's done by crime analysts like you behind the scenes that people don't know about.
Speaker 3:Correct. When we get a new case, obviously the detectives take on the case and then they'll come to us and say, hey, what can you find on this person? Can I get all of their history, their background information? And all of that really assists them in depending on what the case is, it can be very helpful to their investigation and you use a lot of technology, more so than anybody else.
Speaker 2:You're the front runners with, like new technology, basically professional internet stalkers and I know there are especially some in your unit that would love that title but like even just with social media, you guys can look up, say, if there's like a bomb threat or something like that. You can look up somebody's social media and find, oh, like this is their social media and they actually posted about it and you guys are really good at finding that right so you'd be surprised the amount of stuff people post on social media that ends up being super helpful to us and they had no idea so, but a lot with like, even hashtags help us.
Speaker 3:you know, follow a certain story or say there's an event and people are using a hashtag for the event. It helps us monitor social media If we know who's kind of involved or who's running the event, depending on what it is, it can help us monitor anything. Facebook, instagram, x.
Speaker 1:Very cool, and we did have Sergeant Wallace on the podcast to talk about the TIAC. Tiac stands for Tactical Intelligence and Analytics Center. Correct, what is kind of like your day-to-day work when it comes to being in the TIAC.
Speaker 3:So you kind of never know what you're going to walk into any given day. Sometimes it can be super simple. We're pulling data for a specific unit. For example, I pulled some stats for the Marine unit just last week, so stuff like that can be helpful when it comes to tracking calls for service. We help them with that. If there's an intersection that you know has a lot of traffic accidents, we can pull that data and give it to the proper office or unit so they can use that towards proper planning and things of that nature.
Speaker 1:It's interesting too, because you kind of have to be ready at a moment's notice to pivot if there's an emergency situation as well.
Speaker 3:Right. So say we're just pulling data, we could have a call come in and we automatically have to, you know, make sure all of our databases are pulled up so we can do our part to assist the officers on the road and get information out to them as quickly as we can. Let's say a swatting call saying that there's an incident occurring at the school. So we have a system, the teachers have a call button. So if a teacher presses a call button, we automatically get the notification on the screen and it tells us where in the school the incident is occurring. And then we could pull up the SRO's body cam footage and get live footage. We can pull up cameras in the school. We're kind of like eyes in the sky at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the SROs get those notifications as well.
Speaker 3:Yes very cool.
Speaker 2:So how did you come about this position? Is this something that you always wanted to do? Do you have a background? What education do you need to kind of have for it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I've been. I've spoken with a lot of other analysts and asked them how did you get here? And everyone kind of has a different way of getting into this specific occupation. I always knew I wanted to be in law enforcement at some capacity. My dad was a sheriff's deputy for 30 years. His dad was a Delaware state trooper. So even early on in high school I knew I wanted to be in this capacity. But I also knew I didn't want to be a police officer. I just didn't see that for myself. I was like, well, maybe I could go federal.
Speaker 3:I was watching all the TV shows at that time like work for the behavioral analysis unit and the FBI and I'm like, as I was going through college I was like I don't know if that is actually something that I want to do. So I went to USF. I got my bachelor's degree in criminology and a minor in psychology. I graduated there, but during that time I did an internship with the Clearwater Police Department.
Speaker 3:One of my professors at the time was conducting a burglary study with the Clearwater Police Department. So I was selected to be a part of that project and I would go to the Clearwater Police Department twice a week in their crime analysis unit and I would work directly with their crime analyst. So that was my first time being exposed to the world of crime analysis. Even through my studies during college, that had never come up the term or the position within the law enforcement agency. So I thought it was really interesting and I loved what I did for that project on the internship. Then I graduated, I took a couple years off of school and then I went back and got my master's in forensic psychology.
Speaker 2:That's really cool Super cool.
Speaker 3:On the career side, I started actually working in the jail at my prior agency and I worked there for 15 months. I was a clerk in the jail. Did you hate it? No, actually I loved it. It was my first time really being immersed into an area of law enforcement like that. I mean just being exposed to that side of it. You know, once someone's been arrested and incarcerated and I did a lot of clerical stuff for the inmates I would assign them their housing units, their inmate jobs. I'd have to go to their pods, have them sign paperwork and stuff and, shockingly enough, no one ever gave me a problem, which was nice.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 3:So you were there for 15 months, yes, and then my agency, the sheriff, wanted to incorporate an analyst into the narcotics unit and the whole time I was working I talked to the right people and command staff and I let them know that I'm really interested in going into some sort of crime analyst role for the agency. So I was having those conversations, which I think is really important to do also, if you know you want to move up. So I put myself out there. My command staff allowed me to spend some time shadowing with the current crime analysts that were already there and had been there for a long time and had a lot of experience and just a lot of knowledge within the area or that jurisdiction of that sheriff's office. So then I became, on April 20th, 420. That was my first day in the narcotics unit. Oh my gosh, isn't that funny.
Speaker 1:That is funny.
Speaker 3:It was a brand new position. So that was really eye opening for me because I was going into a position that I had never worked in before and also, kind of, I was my own teacher. But it was really a fun time. I left there because the position here in Cape Coral opened and I've lived in Cape Coral so I was like you know what? I think I'll just go for it and see what happens. And now I'm here and I've been here for um since December of 2021. That's awesome. We're happy to have you. I'm coming up on five years of being a crime analyst.
Speaker 1:Congrats. That's incredible, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:And, I think, a big misconception. Even with when I tell people I have a degree in forensic psychology or I say I work in crime analysis, my first kind of response is oh so you do forensics? It's very different.
Speaker 3:It is not forensics. Forensics is a whole other very important unit in a law enforcement agency and they should get all of their credit in crime analysis. While it's been around, it is still technically a newer concept in a law enforcement agency, so I think once you know it's been around for a little bit longer, I think people will start hearing that term more often and have a better idea of what we actually do.
Speaker 1:It seems like forensics is after a crime occurred, right, they're the people that study that crime, whereas crime analysts often work a lot with prevention too. Right, Like you're looking at stats, you're looking at information, you're tracking different things to also help with crime prevention.
Speaker 3:Right. So we try to be as proactive as we possibly can. That's why intel sharing amongst surrounding agencies is so important, and that is, honestly, at least 25% of our day. We get all these different bulletins from different agencies with like attempt to identify situational awareness. So they Lee County Sheriff's Office just had a string of burglaries and they might be coming into our jurisdiction. Yeah, and we know their MO just because Lee County was willing to share that information with us, which is super helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we see emails all the time that you send out with bulletins and things like that of just awareness, or you know people that we're looking into with photos and address, what kind of car they drive, and we've had officers very recently be like recognize this guy from the bulletin and they're able to like stop them, detain them and then had an arrest made out of it we love when that happens, so that's yeah that's the goal like that's what you.
Speaker 3:That's why we send out those emails that we hope everybody reads, and a lot of it. I tell them. I'm like you might overlook a bulletin, but it could be an officer safety bulletin and that's something you need to know when you're heading out to your shift for the night.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's another thing that you do is is officer safety bulletin.
Speaker 3:That's a big part of our job too. So same thing with the intel sharing. Or if we have someone who has committed a certain crime or, for example, made known threats to law enforcement officers, even if it's two counties away, we still want our officers to know about that person, because we've looked into that person and we can see on certain softwares that we have databases that they do travel into our county and you might run into them.
Speaker 2:You might not, but we still want you to be able to have that information for your safety right and everything bleeds over all the time, like there is literally only just a bridge between us and fort myers and there's not even a bridge between us and north fort myers so all of that stuff bleeds over it's a mile away. You can easily travel.
Speaker 3:If we have a resident that lives in Cape Coral but Lee County had a run in with them, we want to know about it. Just because it didn't happen here but they live here, we want to know.
Speaker 1:For sure. So what kind of tools do you use on a daily basis to accomplish what you accomplish?
Speaker 3:So we have quite a few databases that give us access to people's backgrounds, their criminal histories, address and vehicle information, lpr systems. What does that stand for? The license plate reader system. So we have everywhere in the country, not just here, there's license plate readers so you could be traveling and you could come across a camera that catches your tag. So if we have a known offender and we know the tag of their vehicle, we can run their tag number in certain databases and, you know, be able to track them. And if it's something where there's a threat to others or a threat to themselves, that's really important to know where someone's traveling or headed to. Obviously, all these databases you have to have a purpose for utilizing them. So there has to already be an investigation going. There's lots of rules when it comes to using these databases investigation going. There's lots of rules when it comes to using these databases.
Speaker 1:they're so important for protecting the people, right?
Speaker 3:so you can't just willy-nilly it no, you can't look up any ex-boyfriends, but you, you'd be surprised, actually, how much information we can get with just a google search too. So sometimes that can be, we'll have run everything we can in all these databases and then it's like, let me just pop it into Google. And then it's like, oh, that's exactly what I was looking for.
Speaker 2:You can find probably just about anything on the internet. How do you use social media to kind of track people down and figure out what's going on?
Speaker 3:It's different depending on the case. So if I, so if I need to figure out who's an associate, the first thing I'm going to do is go through their followers. You'd also be surprised how much information you can gain just from a picture that was posted. You can try to figure out where it was taken. If you know it was taken in a parking lot and you can see the mall in the background say, okay, I know he was there there. If they're taking a picture leaned up against their car and I was not quite sure what kind of car they were driving at first, but they just posted a picture with their car. Now I know or if you know, what the inside of their residence or their friends residence looks like and they take a picture and they post it yeah and people are happy to post pictures of things.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, we're in this digital age where you can't get away from it. You have some sort of digital footprint, no matter how hard you try not to. So you know, between social media, between Google and the internet, between cameras being everywhere, there's no way that people are just completely offline.
Speaker 3:Right, everyone likes to check in to locations. I mean, I do it myself, so on law enforcement side it can be super helpful.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Currently you work with a couple people, but you guys are trying to grow the unit. What, ultimately, are you guys trying to make everything like, look like essentially?
Speaker 3:So we are supposed to be getting a whole new video wall system in the t-act shortly. We'll have more screens for more of those special databases that we use and cameras throughout the city and the schools, which is just so important nowadays. We are in the process of hiring another analyst. The city's growing exponentially and I think the agency is following suit with that, so we are looking to get more analysts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the whole theme of kind of a lot of what we've been talking about on all the podcasts is just the overall growth that we're seeing. So it's not just your unit, it's every unit. But as patrol grows, you guys also have to grow to keep up with the need.
Speaker 3:There's lots of different things that can be done with our skill set and would be really beneficial to the agency and the city as we grow.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3:I know I didn't even touch on probably half the things, but it kind of gives you a little glimpse of what we do For sure.
Speaker 1:We appreciate it, and thank you so much for joining us for today's episode and we'll see you next time. Have a good one, take care.
