This young lady is taking
a bite out of crime

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

Artists, journalists and advertising executives aren’t the only professionals to heed the axiom, "A picture is worth a thousand words."
Images do wonders in the law-enforcement business too.
Though just 22 and barely out of college, Northeast resident Karen Pahuana has already put that lesson into practice while helping Philadelphia authorities get a better handle on dozens of young suspected gang members in the city.
Pahuana, a 2003 Cardinal Dougherty High School graduate, recently completed her bachelor’s degree program in criminal justice at Neumann College in Aston with a three-month internship with the Philadelphia-Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), a federally funded agency targeting narcotics and related crime activity in the region.
Despite her relative inexperience in the field, the aspiring FBI agent worked side by side with crime analysts possessing decades of experience, and she even showed them a thing or two along the way.
"We never know what our interns are going to be working on — whatever is going on at the time — but they’re not going to be serving coffee," said Ed Regula, a Drug Enforcement Administration analyst serving as manager of the intelligence support center in the HIDTA office.
HIDTA is a partnership among investigative, enforcement and prosecutorial agencies on the local, state and federal levels from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The partnership is based in Philadelphia and directed by former Philadelphia Police Department inspector and Northeast Division commander Jeremiah Daley.
"The main thrust of HIDTA overall is drug-trafficking organizations and money-laundering organizations," Daley said, "but the work has gone beyond traditional drug enforcement into broader crime."
Drug traffickers also tend to be involved in violent crime and to possess illegal weapons. And they often network in a chaotic, anarchic manner unlike the hierarchical system commonly associated with crime organizations.
That’s where Pahuana’s job came in.
Her task was to use specialized computer software to log and link dozens of young men arrested for committing particular crimes in a certain area of the city. HIDTA officials were unable to discuss specific names and places because the investigation is ongoing.
"Originally, I was given about forty targets, and I had to determine what their affiliation was," said Pahuana, who was born in Colombia and moved to the Northeast at age 5.
Their alleged crimes ranged from drug offenses to assault to homicide.
"Most of them are (ages) fifteen to nineteen," Pahuana said. "It’s hard because you look at them and they’re so young and they’re committing these heinous crimes."
Targets of the investigation could be associated with one another through a variety of factors. Investigators look at their criminal histories, family histories and school histories.
"Karen’s job was to sort out certain incidents and individuals involved in those incidents," Daley said.
Ultimately, they attempt to diagram their criminal relations on a wall chart similar to those seen in mob movies and TV shows when federal agents create a "family" tree of sorts.
In real life, however, it doesn’t always work out as well as it does on film. The trees can look more like a big city road map with connections running in all directions. Nowadays, it’s not unusual for a single drug dealer to sell in bulk on the wholesale market and simultaneously operate on the street or consumer level.
The key is figuring out the players and their roles on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level and a corner-by-corner level. "It’s trying to build a picture of what’s going on in certain areas of town," Regula said.
"The old saying is, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ and that’s very true with the intelligence community. It serves as a constant reminder and sorts things out for you," Daley said.
Near the end of Pahuana’s internship, she was called upon to brief members of the city’s law enforcement community on her findings. She stood before experts from the Philadelphia police, district attorney’s office and FBI to explain her chart.
"Basically, it was my conclusions on the affiliations for these targets," Pahuana said. "I didn’t know it was going to be that much of a big deal. I knew it was assisting the investigation."
On a professional level, it was all about using factual data to connect the dots. But Pahuana also found herself considering the underlying factors at work in the lives of the investigation targets.
"It helps you understand people better," she said of the work. "They’re fifteen (years old) and killing somebody. Then you look at their family history and school history. That doesn’t justify (their crimes), but you see what’s happened."
Pahuana, who entered college thinking she wanted to become a criminal prosecutor, now has a different agenda. Eventually, she wants to do both field and analytical work in law enforcement. But first, she wants to learn more.
"I’d like to have a master’s in intelligence analysis," she said.
In the post-9/11 era, those skills are highly valued by agencies responsible for protecting the United States from foreign enemies and domestic threats.
"It’s really mushroomed — the demand for analytical acumen," Daley explained. "People who maybe are not interested in a traditional law-enforcement role but who have critical-thinking skills . . . are finding these jobs to be intriguing. The (law enforcement) community is realizing that this kind of talent saves a lot of street hours." ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com