If you are a new analyst, you might take it personally when you go over a select group of crimes and find no patterns, or analyze a set of phone or bank records in an investigation and see nothing that is of value.
This is normal. But no one tells you that!
Analysts spend a great deal of time filtering through various forms of data looking for information that will be of value, and often they can spend hours, days, even weeks analyzing with no result.
It's not necessarily you!
Yes, if you are a crime analyst, you should spot patterns in high volumes of robberies and burglaries, because there are likely repeat offenders committing more than one crime. But in a small jurisdictions, patterns are less frequent than in a large metropolitan area. That is normal.
Unfortunately, often you won't know if you missed patterns; sometimes you will find out when others find them ahead of you. That is normal, too.
If you are an intelligence or investigative analyst, you may often have a multitude of records to sift through. There is never a guarantee that you will find clues that can lead to arrest and prosecution.
Once I worked through thousands of records for four months and it resulted in nothing. Our job is to dig.
If you find nothing when nothing is there, you are doing a great job!
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