In an environment of fiscal constraint and growing fear of catastrophic events, police services are turning to intelligence and analytic technologies to conduct aggressive information gathering and risk analysis. The present study uses 86 in-depth interviews and participant observation to explore the integration and utilization of intelligence-led policing (ILP) in a Canadian context. From this analysis, we identify how police cultures, organizational context and situational pace of policing constrain an intelligence-led framework. Further, we illustrate how police services have rhetorically adopted ILP and translated it to mean accountability in a time of austerity. By translating ILP, Canadian police services have been able to redefine success within their services without necessarily attending to the outcomes of their practices.