Policing Terrorism Report
No. 2 September 2007
State Fusion Center Processes and Procedures:
Best Practices and Recommendations
by John Rollins and Timothy Connors, Director, Center for Policing Terrorism
About the Authors
John Rollins is the lead author of this report. Mr. Rollins is a member of the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), where he serves as a Specialist in Terrorism and International Crime. Prior to joining CRS, he was chief of staff in the Office of Intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Rollins’s career includes a variety of analytic, legal, and management positions in the U.S. Army, FBI, CIA, DIA, U.S. Marine Corps, Delta Force, and United Nations. He is a licensed attorney and a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellowship program at Harvard University. He also teaches national security courses at a number of universities. The analysis and opinion contained in this report are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of CRS.
Tim Connors is director of the Center for Policing Terrorism (CPT) at the Manhattan Institute. He is a graduate of West Point and holds MBA and JD degrees from the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Connors has helped law enforcement agencies across the country develop sound counterterrorism and intelligence policies and practices. He is a career Army officer who is currently assigned to a civil affairs unit in the Army Reserve.
Introduction
America’s radically decentralized law enforcement system—there are more than 17,000 separate police departments in the United States—is both a strength and a weakness. It is a great strength because the police are better attuned to their local communities and are directly accountable to their concerns. But it is also a terrible weakness in the post–September 11 world, where information sharing is key, and the sheer number of agencies often inhibits information sharing.
Fusion centers – state and regional intelligence centers that pool information from multiple jurisdictions – are the primary platforms for improving law enforcement’s intelligence-sharing capabilities. In recognition of the importance of fusion centers, President Bush highlighted the work being done in these facilities during a recent speech in which he also called America’s 800,000 state and local police “the front line in defeating terror.”
Federal agencies are not built to be the eyes and ears of local communities; local law enforcement—with the right training and support—can be. Yet there is still much work to be done in order to fully enlist state and local law enforcement in the war on terror. As Los Angeles police chief William Bratton and Manhattan Institute senior fellow George Kelling wrote last year in a Manhattan Institute Civic Report titled “Policing Terrorism”:
Americans accustomed to television shows such as 24 and CSI think that law enforcement has all sorts of intelligence information at its fingertips. This could not be further from the truth. The unfortunate reality is that law enforcement—federal, state, and local—is very far behind the private sector in terms of the ability to use technology to gather, analyze, and disseminate information.… When you rent a car today at many airports, an attendant will come out with a handheld device that enables him to gather all the information he needs on you and the car, send it wirelessly to a main database, and bill your credit card, all within a matter of few seconds. Just imagine what might have happened if the Maryland state trooper who had stopped 9/11 hijacker Ziad S. Jarrah for speeding on September 9, 2001, had had access to that type of technology and had discovered that Jarrah was on the CIA’s terrorist watch list.
The 9/11 murderers exploited law enforcement’s inability to harness the information systems that are commonly available today. Fusion centers are central to erasing that deficiency. If properly operated, fusion centers will enable law enforcement to harness information and intelligence to better identify, assess, and manage emerging threats to public safety.
via Policing Terrorism Report 2 | State Fusion Center Processes and Procedures.
