Following a week that saw three people killed as a result of deadly violence in the heart of the city, Savannah-Chatham police have hired their first-ever intelligence and counterterrorism commander, Daniel Kelin.

Kelin's position is part of an effort to bolster the department's shift toward being more proactive in crime fighting, and less reactionary.

"My main focus and mission here is to provide officers on the ground and our decision makers on both the law enforcement and civilian side with the best, most accurate, timely intelligence information possible so they can remain progressive and proactive in their duties," Kelin said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Kelin's position is a new one, but metro's intelligence department, the Savannah Area Regional Intelligence Center, has been around since 2007.

The group's main goal is to provide information about short- and long-term crime patterns and trends, and to assist in daily investigative efforts, according to the department's website.

Kelin previously worked as a counterterrorism specialist at the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center in Philadelphia. Before that, he served in special operations forces for both the U.S. Army and the Marines.

"What I bring to the department is an outside perspective," Kelin said. "I think a lot of the principles of community and intelligence-led policing apply across the board at those various levels. There's even some tactics and strategies that can be implemented at the local level to help increase our ability to be aggressive and target whatever the local policing issue is."

Kelin said a large portion of his job will be taking the intelligence the department gathers already and using it to develop more concrete strategies for policing on a daily basis. This includes everything from civilian tips to quantifying the relationships in gang and group crime networks within the city.

"Cops know their area. They know their sector. They know the players involved," Kelin said. "It's a matter of making sure we're capturing that information at a strategic level and making plans to formalize that collection process and turn into actionable intelligence."

Intelligence-led policing

In a June 19 interview, Savannah-Chatham police chief Joseph Lumpkin said Kelin will help the department's intelligence-led policing model.

ILP is a strategic approach to crime fighting that makes use of data analysis to determine how best to allocate police resources.

Lumpkin said ILP targets the small number of people committing the highest number of crimes and collects data on members of the community prone to committing violent crime. The data collected can give police a better idea of where crime is being committed, what groups or gangs are most active and where those crimes are being committed.

"You target the individuals and their behavior," Lumpkin said. "Most people in these neighborhoods are good people and want to be safe. They want to be able to let the kids go out and play. It's the individuals in there who have either intimidated them or made them feel less safe and more likely to not cooperate with the police."

Kelin wants to change that.

While he's only been here for a couple of weeks, Kelin said he's been scouring different parts of the city, seeking the public's opinions on crime and how the city and police department are responding to it.

He attended the City Council meeting that was attended by more than 100 people who marched in the memory of Scott Waldrup, who was killed in a car crash following a shooting in City Market after the Independence Day fireworks last week.

"That touched me in a way that really motivated me to want to reach out to other members of the community," he said.

Kelin said reaching out to the community is a part of building a crucial facet of intelligence gathering: a "human intelligence" network.

He said that by "making friends, building relationships, identifying motivations and figuring out how to empower people to take action" he can help build up the trust between the department and Savannah residents.

"There was a lot of anger toward a variety of people - toward the police department, toward the city, toward the people that are responsible for going and shooting places up. There's also a lot of sadness," Kelin said. "It's a beautiful city. It's got a lot of heart and a lot of soul, and I think it deserves the chance to have a proactive role in helping to keep itself safe."