Blue Knights Operating at International Level
Blue Knights Operating at Local Level
Blue Knight at Local Level - Proactive Vs. Reactive Policing
Blue Knight Organization
Blue Knight Principles
Tools and Facilities for Blue KnightOperational Intelligence Facility
Resource Allocation and Effectiveness Management
Problem Solving
Blue Knight Accoutrements
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(N.B. The title and concepts of "Blue Knight©" are the copyright of Ian Beckett, PhD)
Blue Knights, operating at international level, can: -
Throughout, Blue Knights operate with to the highest ethical and moral standards and with total objectivity and impartiality.
So, Blue Knights, with their Guardian Angels providing high quality intelligence support, can be used both to neutralize serious outbreaks and to help manage conflict once any outbreak has occurred. Blue Knights operate within the relevant law, of course, and under the auspices of a suitable authority - either the UN, or a national government. Blue Knights are "invited in" to act as a catalyst for Peace.
At local level, Blue Knights operate generally as part of the local police force, although this is not essential:-
The role, functions and technologies of Blue Knights and their Guardian Angels are well defined and established. Before looking at Blue Knight, in its local guise, in any detail, it would be helpful to review the current policing scene, as it has developed in recent years.
The figure shows a Causal Loop Model (see Systems Thinking on this website) to illustrate some of the relationships that appear in modern policing at the local level. In particular the figure shows the different effects of reactive policing - generally, crime fighting - and proactive policing, the stuff of Blue Knights. In the model, hollow arrowheads indicate that the two ends of the arrow act in sympathy. Filled-in arrow heads indicate that the two ends of the arrow act in opposition, i.e. as one rises the other falls and vice versa.
Social turbulence in any dynamic society tends to prejudice relationships within comunities, families, etc. So, we find many people living on their own, travelling significant distances to work, living in dormitary towns, having little community involvement. These and other people form disconnected social elements. While many such people are perfectly well-behaved, there is a tendency for some to take to crime and, by the very fact of their disconnection, they constitute disorder in the broadest sense of that word.
Reactive policing responds to the crime and reduces it - red lines in the figure. Unfortunately, there is more to it than that. Crime causes a general Fear of Crime, fanned by the media so that even those who have never experienced crime, the weak and the vulnerable. go in fear for their lives, safety and property. Often, this fear may be irrational: it is nonetheless real, and can seriously impair quality of life, causing people to stay in their homes after dark, avoid public places and adopt a siege mentality in their houses. As the figure shows, this leads to a reduction in the Cohesiveness of Society as people isolate themselves. The process is social disintegration or social fragmentation - both terms are used.
Proactive Policing works quite differently. It's aim in such a scenario is to improve social bonding and positive social interation, to "include everybody in." And this is not just soft, sociology bunk. It has often been noted that small villages, archetypically in Wales, are comprised of tight-knit communities where everybody knows everybody else. Such tight-knit communities often need very little formal policing - in effect, they do their own. If a youngster gets out of hand, offended parties will know his parents and teachers, and will "have a word." Hacidic Jewish communities in N. London similalry self-police very effectively, with everyone knowing everyone else, and the whole community acting as one towards transgressors both from within and without that community.
Proactive Policing, then, seeks to reassure, to reintroduce, to cross-connect, to overcome social barriers, to help, to protect...Today's policemen know this in their hearts. It is amazing how many police officers are involved in community activities: youth clubs, sporting clubs, community action groups, etc. They seem to do this spontaneously, and gain no noticeable credit from their superiors. As Blue Knights, these activites would be part of their everyday activities.
The figure shows both Reactive and Proactive policing acting together. In theory, they should. In practice, most police effort goes towards countering crime. Mentally cancel all the Blue lines from the figure, leaving only the Red and the Black, to reveal the situation facing many communities today. With crime, and the fear of crime, reducing cohesiveness (i.e. reducing social capital) societies are experiencing more and more disconnected social elements, leading to more crime and an endless cycle. Is this why the red regression line on the crime statistics above is slowly accelerating? Is this why police are working ever harder just to keep up? Is this why only 5% of crime is detected and dealt with?
The three parts in this figure build up to the same ideas. Number 1 shows (some of) the relationships between crime, disorder and fear. Disorder encourages crime, and crime encourages disorder. Similarly, Disorder and fear stoke each other up. (I should mention that I am using the term "disorder" in a broader sense than the police. Here disorder means anything that is not ordered, i.e. related, connected and in its appropriate pattern.
Number 2 adds in the effects of neighbouring and victime helping - both indicators of a healthy society. Fear tends to detract from neighbouring while, on the other hand, neighbouring reduces fear. Finally at Number 3 we see how Blue Knights fit into the picture. Some officers are inevitably needed to address crime, leaving the remainder to undertake proactive policing, seeking to reduce disorder and fear, and to increase neighbouring. If the Blue Knights get it right, two results accrue: -
Number 3 also suggests that there may be a need to "prime the pump." If a community is already in the grip of crime and fear, then it is likely that all available police are dedicated to crime fighting. It may not be practicable to climb out of this state without assistance. So, a task force would be required to a) assist with addressing the crime wave, and b) to start up the Blue Knight programme.
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Once the Blue Knight programme sees results, the crime figures will drop, the additional officers can be withdrawn as there is a progressive change in emphasis from crime fighting to pro-active peacekeeping, and as the community regains control of their own society and territory.
Note how this unfolding situation reflects at local level the progression from Peacemaking to Peacekeeping to Peacebuilding at international level with which we started.

The figure shows how Blue Knights operate in this simple, community-based scenario. They take part in Patrol duties, since they can only operate effectively by being within and part of the community. As the figure shows, there will be many Blue Knights dispersed throughout the population, with little regard for crime statistics, acting as a dampening field. Mistake number one is to allocate patrol resources by crime hotspots. Instead they should be allocated by population density, regardless of how well, or badly behaved that population might be. Blue Knights are able to communicate directly with, and assist, each other and must be mutually close enough to respond in a sensible time.
Blue Knights do not simply wander at will, although there may be some of that to explore territories. Instead they operate on the basis of intelligence. The intelligence officer may be thought of as a Guardian Angel, in continual radio contact with each Blue Knight, offering guidance, advice and information to the Blue Knight as the occasion requires. The Guardian Angel employs an operational intelligence database, formed around a Profile of the area. A typical database schema will be shown later. The profile data is stored by geographical location. In addition to background, slowly-changing data such as the location of houses, individuals, telephones, emergency service, etc., it also stores data on personalities, relationships, histories, who is doing what to whom... etc.
This more volatile, ephemeral data is acquired largely by the Blue Knight as he or she patrols his/her territory, meeting people, visiting the old and vulnerable, going to drinking establishments, looking around businesses, visiting youth clubs, etc. Over a period of time, the Profile builds up to be a mine of data which the Guardian Angel can organize and analyze. He/she (hereafter simply 'he' for brevity) can develop indicators of the state of a society or community, indicators of disorder and of impending difficulties. In short he can identify current state and future intentions - the essence of intelligence. Working with patrolling Blue Knights, The Guardian Angel can anticipate problems and the Blue Knights can be on the spot to prevent disorder, crime, whatever.
For Blue Knights to interact effectively with the communities they serve, they must of course be respected rather than feared, and they must also be approachable if they are to elicit information. This means that, generally, they must operate alone - how often have we seen patrol officers, in pairs, talking to each other, oblivious to what is going on around them, and completely unapproachable.
So there emerges the picture of a seemingly-lone Blue Knight, protector of the weak, champion of the people - but fully connected to other Blue Knights and supported by the Guardian angel.
This archetype of the lone hero is important. Throughout history there have been individuals in truth and in myth, who have stood up for the people. The Knights of King Arthur's Round Table offer one such myth, Robin Hood, another, while the Texas Rangers offer a more recent example, a mixture of truth and legend. Of these, perhaps Arthur's Knights present the most appropriate archetype, for several reasons: -
Morte D'Arthur, Malory, 1460

Operating a Blue Knight© programme requires sound organization and management. Blue Knight© is not some soft option; it requires dedicated officers, of high energy, integrity and self-discipline. The figure shows how activities "behind the scenes" take place - these are, essentially, the activities of the Round Table. Bottom left of the figure simply repeats the previous figure. In addition, we can now see: -

The N2 table above shows the various relationships and information moving around the control loop. Note that Level 1 = reactive Peacemaking demands, while Levels 2 and 3 correspond to Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding respectively.
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Blue Knights require technological support for: -
The following figure shows a typical Operational Intelligence display of the kind a Guardian Angel would use.
In this example, the Blue Knights are operating at local level. The map, which represents an area to the south of Glasgow in Scotland, has been chosen for illustrative purposes only. (I lived in Clarkston as a boy.) The various keys and map overlays are drawn from the Operational Database.
The four sides of the console represent, respectively: -
Under People, are "knowns", i.e. people with a track record of some kind, officials, leaders, etc. Under Places, in addition to permanent features and landmarks, the system stores locales with a history of focusing activities: it is noticeable that certain places lend themselves to congregations (and to swift escapes.) Under Events are the many categories of disorder and anti-social behaviour. Patterns of events may be displayed over the map and interrogated, as shown.
Environment at the bottom concerns itself environmental disorder and with its clearup, in the upper and lower registers respectively. A major indicator of a robust society is the rate at which disorder, decay, graffitto, etc., are cleared up. Measuring such indicators provides Blue Knights with a measure of progress in Peacebuilding
At bottom right, marked VCR mode, is a control which allows the Guardian Angel to present categories of information at high speed, like operating fast-forward on a video player. This presents "time-lapse" view of the data on the map, and highlights changes in patterns over time, hot-spots, migrations, etc., which may not be apparent in day-to-day operatons.
Finally at bottom left is a button marked Predict... which allows the operator to predict and display a pattern of possible future events and situations, based on the historic information stored in the database. This prediction will be based on evidential fractal statistics as shown at the start of this page, and each time the button is pressed, it will present a different prediction, statistically valid, drawn from the same fractal.
Following are two figures illustrating a notional Blue Knight Operational Intelligence Database Schema. The two pages may be joined end to end to produce a double page layout. This particular schema relates to a UK-type environment. For less-ordered, more turbulent societies and communities, a different schema might be appropriate, but it would operate along similar lines: -
Levels 1, 2 and 3 in the figures correspond to Peacemaking, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding respectively
The diagram is taken from a simulation of Blue Knight, created to explore the many options for allocating officers in various proportions to Peacemaking, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding. The simulation starting conditions may be set to mirror the real world conditions in which Blue Knights are operating, perhaps as part of an indigenous police force, perhaps as a team imported by invitation into a disturbed society or nation. The purpose of the simulation is to explore different options for restoring order, maintaining it once restored, and for building on the Peace. In this example, Blue Knights are represented as police constables (PCs) and Guardian Angels are represented as India (i.e. Intelligence) Officers. "Behind" the control and indicator panel is a comprehensive model of the society, which presents disorder, crime and turbulence. Blue Knights and Guardian Angels together can explore different ways of dealing with the short-term issues, while also seeing the longer-term outcome from their actions.
Top left are controls for allocating PCs to each of the three "levels", Peacemaking, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding, . As shown, 40% are allocated to Peacemaking, none to the other two levels. Centre left are the establisments. Using the pop-up, this table will also show the actuals, and may be used to simulate shipping in reinforcements, for instance, or reducing numbers. Top centre are counters showing numbers actually on the ground at the present time. Switches to the right are set to indicate their basic operational mode. For Blue Knights, the mode would be PCs on Foot, but then not all PCs are Blue Knights. Two switches below that determine whether the India Officer/Guardian Angel is available full time or half time. Dials show the reported crime rate, the percentage of those crimes being detected and the state of stability - a measure of the degree of disorder in the society. The rotating knobs are used to tune the simulation to local conditions.
Using the simulation, Blue Knights may explore a wide range of possibilities. For instance, it is possible to superimpose an unexpected outburst of disorder into the simulation and to see how apportioning officers in different ways between the three levels, or calling in reinforcements, enables control of the situation.
Many of the problems facing Blue Knights will be complex and intractable. Gathering good intelligence is only one step towards a solution. Formal problem-solving methods may also be helpful. Typical of these might be Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), used in such a way that all, or most, of the parties to some issue take part. Similarly, Hierarchical Issue Method (HIM), which is designed and intended for group use, and is fully tool supported, can be used to address more complex and diverse problems.
Finally, it may be very helpful, particularly in complex areas with high risk of conflict and with ethnic/religious overtones, to invoke synthetic environments - these would be created and operated by Guardain angels as part of their intelligence function. A typical synthetic environment would be of the immersion variety, with representation of the environment, terrain, threats, etc., and with the various protagonists, preferably represented by the appropriate real people but, failing that by role playing experts.
Using the synthetic environment as an experimental social laboratory, it is possible for Blue Knights to practice different negotiation tactics, for instance, to observe the reactions and to develop appropriate strategies without the risks inherent in trying them out for the first time in the real world.
The role envisaged for Blue Knights as individual champions, yet dispersed members of a team, necessitates special personal equipment and facilities. Many suitable facilities are emerging into the market as a result of the US Individual Warrior program. These include: -
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Last updated: Sep 2005
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