Linkage Blindness

Law enforcement investigators sometimes do not see or are prevented from seeing beyond their own jurisdictional responsibilities. The officer's responsibility usually stops at the boundary of the jurisdiction except when hot pursuit is necessary. A police department's accountability and responsiveness to its jurisdictional clients can create a sense of isolation from the outside world. The term linkage blindness was coined in 1984 to denote an underlying problem with law enforcement serial murder investigations and some other crimes as well.

Intergovernmental conflict between law enforcement agencies is unfortunately a common occurrence. [Page 280]The basis of these conflicts is a real or perceived violation of an agency's boundaries or geographical jurisdiction, or of the specific responsibilities of an agency to enforce specific laws. Agencies large and small continually practice boundary maintenance to protect their jurisdictions from intruder agencies moving onto their turf. The problem with boundary maintenance is that a serial killer can take advantage of these situations and, as has occurred in many instances, continue to kill until a pattern has been identified or cooperative agreements are made between agencies.

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) provides officers indirect access to other agencies to obtain information on wanted persons and stolen property. However, the sharing of information on unsolved crimes and investigative leads is not specifically a function of this extensive nationwide information system. Reciprocal relationships between homicide investigators are at best informal and are usually within relatively limited geographical areas. The United States has the most decentralized policing system in the world, and the exchange of investigative information among police departments in this country is sometimes lacking. As a result, linkages between similar crime patterns, modus operandi, or crime signatures can be missed. Such a condition can inhibit early warning or detection of the serial murderer preying on multiple victims. The exception is when crimes are being committed within a relatively small geographic area and can more readily be seen. Law enforcement agencies operate on information, yet agencies sometimes fail to seek out, use, or process it from colleagues or other agencies.

The lack of interagency collaboration or sharing of information on unsolved homicides occurs for a number of reasons: Individual investigators may see any form of cooperation with another agency as a threat to career enhancement, a reduction of their roles in cases, or a challenge to their professional expertise. Agency rivalry creates a sense of vulnerability and fundamental distrust of “outsiders.” Budgetary considerations can be a core concern for a police administrator when contemplating interagency collaboration, including which facilities will be used and how will agency costs be apportioned. The loss of policy direction may also be of concern to a police administrator because any form of collaboration will mean some loss of control and compromise.

The issue of accountability is another stumbling block to effective interagency collaboration. Anxiety over accountability means that the affected agencies may hold one another responsible for the outcome of an investigation. Interagency collaboration also means that there will be a requirement to build and maintain a consensus regarding the specific strategies and tactics. This becomes especially difficult when agencies are dominated by professionals with different ideas and theories about how such a collaboration should work. In addition, the individual officer may derive a sense of self-worth from the turf prerogatives accorded the institution, and an attack on the institution's turf, real or imagined, is taken as an attack on the employees' self-worth.

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