"The Emerging Role of Law Enforcement"

By
Amotz Brandes (Chameleon Associates LLC) &
Richard Mears (University of Maine at Augusta)

It is very important that in the first line of defense against terrorism—the seven hundred thousand officers on the street—be given adequate training and background information on terrorism, the methods and techniques of the terrorist, and the likelihood of an imminent attack … it is simply that these officers know their territory and are on the street 24 hours a day. Considering that the terrorist who attacked the World Trade Center were stopped on several occasions by the local police prior to the attack for minor traffic violations, it is logical to assume that this pattern of random interception will continue in the future. If and when similar situations occur, our local and state officers should have background knowledge by which to arrive at a reasonable suspicion. (Tully and Willoughby May 2002)

One of the most significant outcomes of the recent terrorist attacks throughout the world and in particular the United States is the changing role of the law enforcement officer. Police typically have been trained in the United States to be “reactive” in nature. A typical police officer will seldom engage a member of the general public, whom they do not know, absent some legally defined justification. This aversion to police initiated contact starts with the basic premise that, “the general public is free to go about its business unencumbered by agents of the government.”

“Terrorism” changes the equation dramatically. Technology, population movement, and mass transportation have all converged over the last 20 years to completely change the way we conduct our lives and the nature of the threats we now confront. September 11, 2001 was a stunning example of the potential harm mankind can do in today’s world. A relatively small group of people - unfettered by bureaucratic control - plan, practice, and initiate an attack against the government of the United States and do more damage than the WW2 assault on Pearl Harbor. They launched a new s tyle of war in the history of mankind that will probably become known as ‘4th generation warfare’.

So how does this affect the way police operate? Well first and foremost, there are no clearly drawn front lines in this war. This is not an enemy that our military machinery, migh ty as it may be, will be able to fight. The enemy is among us these days and may appear in a varie ty of forms: from the fanatic to the religious to the special interest cause. They are of foreign origin or ci tizens of the United States. They are young and old, men and women, and do not fit any stereo typical profile. This enemy is not deterred by our democratic punitive and correctional mechanism of incarceration or even by the death penal ty. Its only deterrence lies in failure to achieve his/her terrorist objective.

Police, now occupy the front line in the war against terrorism, and must make a rapid paradigm shift in order to respond and prevent future catastrophic events. To succeed, a new police role has to emerge that changes our “reactive” s tyle to become “proactive” and securi ty oriented. Being reactive gives a potential aggressor the opportuni ty to strike first. In the case of traditional criminal activi ty, reactive response is a risk that socie ty has been willing to take. However, in the case of terrorism, being one step behind the aggressor means putting entire communities in harm’s way.

Taking a proactive approach means interceding before the attack has a chance to occur. To do this, we must be able to anticipate terrorist activities, and detect suspicious behavior before it escalates into an event. It is not simply a matter of finding the means of potential aggression such as a bomb. Because once the bomb is in the hands of a terrorist intent on using it, we are too late.

This proactive approach and training was adopted by some law enforcement agencies in the United States. Among them is the Amtrak Police Department that realized the high-level threat posed to its trains and facilities and in May of this year decided to embark on a training program to educate its managerial staff on terrorist threat mitigation techniques. The threat mitigation methodologies Amtrak Police Department adopted were developed in Israel and were tailored to American criminal justice practices and regulations.

There is still a long way to go. The 800,000-plus U.S. law enforcement officers are expected to do a job for which they have few policies and little training. The result is an immense waste of resources, a serious skill gap, and an incredible vulnerabili ty in our homeland securi ty. The media tells us that securi ty is “beefed up” when the number of police officers deployed to a given location is increased. But contrary to conventional wisdom, numbers are not a good way to provide securi ty. Rather, it’s the abili ty of law enforcement to recognize suspicious activities and people, their skill at assessing the seriousness of the threat, and the abili ty to deploy strategies to stop the threat, that minimizes the threat from terrorists who seek to do us serious harm.

The biggest weakness of the current American securi ty approach is the subjective focus on risk, as opposed to an objective focus on threat. Risk is a subjective assumption made based on past occurrences; threat, on the other hand, is constant. It doesn’t matter how many people want to kill you as long as there is one person who wants to kill you. Assuming threat means making it clear to law enforcement that a terrorist attack can happen any day and any time. Having that assumption made translates to a different mode of operations where engagement with a suspect is done immediately and without hesitation.

One of the keys to a proactive approach is a procedural framework that legally articulates the practical parameters for officers to detect suspicion assess threat and deploy against those terrorist threats. For example, until now, law enforcement has focused on finding means of aggression in order to prove criminal (or terrorist) intent. Proof is only important if the objective of police is to incarcerate or detain a terrorist. The new threat mitigation objective of police can be achieved through surveillance or a simple public service oriented engagement with a suspect.

But prior to this engagement with the public, it is imperative that the police know what they are trying to protect against; they must have clearly identified “securi ty objectives”. Those objectives will define calculated risk, the scope of the protected environment, the operational environment, securi ty priorities, and so on. For example, law enforcement must work with objectives similar to those of the Secret Service, with the protected environment being their communi ty and not the President.

The procedural framework must also include matrices for refutation of suspicion, deployment in the context of viable terrorist methods of operations, and quali ty control that will assure compliance and alertness among law enforcement officers.

To identify suspicion in the context of a viable terrorist threat entails some sort of profiling activi ty. The word “profiling” is usually associated with the politically charged term of “racial profiling.” Racial profiling not only presents political problems, but it is very ineffective and counterproductive when dealing with terrorism.

Terrorists understand law enforcement’s inclination towards racial profiling. They take advantage of that vulnerabili ty by assuming profiles that are opposite of what we think of as a typical terrorist. Terrorists may use children or elderly women to unknowingly deliver a bomb. They are known as “mules.” They may also assume the identi ty of a respectable businessman in order to avoid suspicion in the environment they are operating in.

A new methodology called “Predictive Profiling” was developed by Chameleon Associates, a Southern California based consulting firm in conjunction with the Universi ty of Maine at Augusta. This new methodology articulates suspicion based on situational and behavioral profiles. Predictive Profiling breaks down both the planning and execution of a terrorist attack into “Aggressors Methods of Operation” (AMO). This approach allows law enforcement to center their attention on the way terrorists work as opposed to focusing on who they are. Predictive Profiling focuses on finding terrorist intentions as oppose to means of aggression, its main objective is threat mitigation and not necessarily prosecution and incarceration. The methodology is a very effective method for stopping state-sponsored terrorism where the falsification of identities and the use of ‘mules’ is very common.

Defining terrorist scenarios as “Aggressors Methods of Operation” allows agencies to tell their officers out on the street what to look for. Instead of giving vague instructions such as “look for all suspicious activi ty,” officers using Predictive Profiling are able to define suspicious indicators based on predicted terrorist methods of operations. An example of a suspicion indicator is a person with strange attire in the context of the environment they are in. This could mean that the person is a terrorist who has assumed a different identi ty to as not to arouse suspicion.

Contrary to popular belief, most terrorists do not have criminal backgrounds. Most terrorists will try to avoid breaking the law in order not to expose their operations while they are still in the planning stages. Law enforcement officers are trained to look for a criminal background once reasonable suspicion is found. This procedure may be effective when trying to catch criminals, but it doesn’t work to ferret out terrorists.

Articulating suspicion indicators into law enforcement policies and procedures is also very important from a legal perspective. Fearing lawsuits, law enforcement officers are more cautious about confronting individuals who appear suspicious in order to avoid the appearance of disregarding civil liberties, which might generate lawsuits.

A detailed procedural framework and a policy written in the context of what terrorists do as opposed to who they are will empower law enforcement officers to engage the terrorist threat with confidence as well as the assurance that what they are doing is correct. Their actions will also be acceptable to the courts who are concerned about justifiable reasons for engagement with suspects.

This securi ty role for law enforcement requires a new skill set of universally applicable skills that include: enemy oriented thinking processes (“Red Team”), behavioral and situational profiling, securi ty questioning techniques and communication with the communi ty on a scale not realized until now. Principles such as communi ty policing will become critical if we hope to defeat the new enemy. The effectiveness of communi ty policing lies in the voluntary contacts between police and the public where the public is being served and at the same time terrorists are being deterred. Police do have the abili ty to engage the public if they revise their techniques of contact and questioning and insure they use a customer friendly approach that suggests public “securi ty” as opposed to “enforcement.”

Recently (June 2004) the Office of Communi ty Oriented Policing funded a project of the Maine Communi ty Policing Institute, in partnership with the Chicago Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police to train on the use of this systematic approach at O’Hare International Airport. These organizations collaborated with Chameleon to deliver a 40-hour training and demonstration project for members of the Regional Communi ty Policing Institute Network. This training included the securi ty assessment process described above and gave all the attendees an opportuni ty to apply field-questioning techniques within the airport terminal environment. These principles, although sophisticated, are easy to apply in the mass transportation environment.

Administrative rules, which are regulatory in nature and designed to protect the public and insure safe ty, are becoming part of the law enforcement function. Police are already being used in securi ty roles within the confines of airport securi ty, for example. Yet they have not been sufficiently trained for this task. In order for them to perform the securi ty function they need training in areas such as: non-confrontational interviewing, behavioral profiling, methods of aggression by terrorists, and the abili ty to continually assess their securi ty environment based on the principle of dynamic evolution.

Police in this war on terrorism will have to be creative, fast thinking, empowered with the abili ty to make decisions and act decisively in the face of threat and at the same time be defenders of the Constitution and protectors of civil liberties. Achieving this balance involves using these acquired skills that must be constantly tested to insure competence. We need to position ourselves ahead of the enemy, not behind and trying to catch up. In short, we must think like the enemy and act like the defender.

References:

Terrorism: The Role of Local and State Police Agencies by Edward J. Tully and E.L. (Bud) Willoughby, http://www.neiassociates.org/state-local.htm

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