Community Policing in the Fight Against Terrorism: Strategies & Success Stories

Terrorism is an act of violent extremism by an individual or group pursuing political change. Helfstein (2012) supports the argument that terrorism results from radicalization whereby people adopt extremist political beliefs, particularly those that encourage violence. Violent extremism continues to be a grim reality in the United States. Even after the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attack that propelled the country to be more alert and vigilant against terrorism, acts of terrorism still persist. This paper analyses and discusses ways in which community policing can be effectively used as a prevention strategy.

Discussion

The U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) in an effort to fight terrorism, acknowledged the critical need for local police to collaboratively work with residents, business owners, community groups, and other stakeholders to ensure community resilience to violent extremism. This resilience would be achieved by countering radicalization by regularly engaging and empowering members of a community. In a bid to further the fight against violent extremism, instrumental governmental organizations with support from the DOJ ,the ‘Role of Community Policing in Homeland Security and Countering Violent Extremism’ project was created. The project brought about a community policing guide for law enforcement organizations to help counter violent extremism. The guide contains five key principles that have been found to be successful in ensuring homeland security through community policing. The principles include; fostering and enhancing trusting partnerships with the community, engaging all residents to address public safety matters, leveraging public and private stakeholders, utilizing all partnerships to counter violent extremism, and training all department members. According to the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office, 2011), community policing philosophy is founded on three critical components, as highlighted in the guiding principles above. These include partnerships with the community, organizational transformation, and problem-solving. Community policing over the years has proven to be very useful in counter-terrorism. For instance, in the case of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who had planned a terrorist attack, however, he was stopped through the collaboration between law enforcement and private businesses. In this case, the private businesses, chemical companies, were suspicious of the purchase orders made by Khalid and shared their suspicions with relevant authorities, preventing the imminent destructive attack.

Since time immemorial ethnic and racial groups worldwide have rebelled against state authorities to attain power or possess independent territories. Guler (2016) identified and classified common problems such groups face in a community that results in rebellions and eventual violent extremism. These common problems include; the need to establish an ethnic identity, either real or perceived discrimination, unfair distribution of economic resources, historical traumas, unfavorable social culture or regime, international interferences, and the collapse of central authorities.

In recent times local authorities have stepped up to the challenge of finding ways to establish efficient relationships with the community to help detect possible terrorist plans and actors. In the case of my community, the major issue that will have to be dealt with is establishing trust between the local police department and community leaders, which has been severely affected by significant clashes between some departments’ police chiefs and community chiefs. This is a point of concern as community leaders are very influential to members of the community in terms of guidance. The first step would be acknowledging the clashes and investigating the root causes of these clashes. In most cases, the causes of such clashes are usually a result of misunderstandings due to the diversity of groups in the community. Each group has belief systems and practices that require unique responses from law enforcement. On the basis of this notion, training will be necessary for the police chiefs as well as the rest of the officers, can distinguish behaviors that are legal and protected by the constitution from criminal behavior, such as speaking in a foreign language. The training would also be beneficial in creating officers’ awareness of what members of a community regard as attacks on their cultures and beliefs, such as females being forced to interact with male officers, which goes against their traditions. The act of embracing cultural differences shows genuine interest by the local enforcement to accommodate the needs of the community and be of service and is a step towards improving and fostering trusting partnerships moving forward.

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It is crucial for law enforcement to be realistic when fostering partnerships to ensure such collaborations counter-terrorism in the community. The guide by COPS encourages local enforcement to constantly find innovative ways of fostering partnerships with local communities. This can be achieved essentially by perceived transparency of law enforcement engagement efforts as well as their means of gathering information or intelligence from members of the community. Suppose members of the community feel that law enforcement interactions with the community are solely intended to attain information rather than a genuine interest in the partnership. In that case, they become distrustful and hence unwilling to work with local authorities. Some strategies that can be used for successful partnerships may include; ensuring officers have training that each encounter between law enforcement and a community member is respectful and conducted in a fair manner. It would also be useful for law enforcement on duty to engage and participate in community activities consistently in non-threatening capacities. This makes effective and long-lasting bonds between law enforcement and individuals or groups possible. A successful case of this strategy is that of Loudoun County in Virginia, where the local police have a Community Resource Unit at each station. A deputy is then appointed to promote coordination through outreach efforts with members of the community, such as homeowners and business leaders. The deputies in the county further attend community events, make presentations in local institutions such as churches, and hold workshops for a group with common interests or concerns, for example, workshops for teachers or religious leaders where information is disintegrated openly and members of communities in partnership with the deputies discuss the community issues. This strategy has been very successful in community policing in Loudoun County, and the scenario presented for my case would benefit from borrowing some aspects of this strategy. The ideas I borrow include the formation of a Community Resource Unit whose primary focus is ensuring effective community policing hence putting more focus on coming up with ways to foster and maintain trust with community members.

Training for all police officers is necessary so as to change the traditional reactive model of how law enforcement responds to their call of duty to more proactive methods. The training modules should also emphasize sensitizing police officers to distinguish constitutionally protected behaviors from suspicious activities, as this has been a huge cause of distrust of law enforcement by ethnic and racial groups in the United States. To achieve this, training modules should be up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased. It is also important for the training to sensitize police officers on the delicate balance between gathering intelligence and community engagement efforts during their interactions with members of the community. It is also necessary that the training stresses personal accountability when in the line of duty since, in today’s modern world, law enforcement actions are being watched hence should behave and talk accordingly.

In the case of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, discussed earlier, two private chemical companies reported the suspicious activities to their local authorities, which in turn contacted the FBI. The FBI recognized the imminent danger posed by Aldawsari when it reported the second time. This case exposes a gap in the need to come up with ways of directly bringing the public and the police together to report suspicious activity prior to terrorist acts. The most effective method would be using social media to engage and communicate with residents. Through social media, local authorities solicit tips, share information on unsolved crimes, expose crime trends, warn against potential danger, and educate community members on violent extremism, which is how to identify terrorist actors or groups. Town hall meetings complement online engagements where community members can raise their concerns and learn how to be actively involved in ensuring the community’s safety (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2014).

Communication between citizens and senior staff in local law enforcement should be made possible so that it is clear and direct. This helps foster trusting relationships and partnerships as senior staff presence in community meetings and active roles in community policing engagements help reduce citizens’ fear of police efforts and presence in a locality. This direct communication would also result in perceived transparency by law enforcement by community members in the countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives.

Countering prevention strategies through community policing should also give special focus to dealing with lone-wolf terrorists. Lone wolf terrorists are lone actors in terror attacks. Lone wolf attacks have been on the increase in Europe and the United States over recent years. According to Schuurman et al. (2019), haste assumptions made regarding lone wolfs being part of larger networks should be reconsidered by law enforcement and the community at large. This is based on research findings that lone terror actors are not as stealthy and highly capable when it comes to pre-attacks as they are prone to early detection due to suspicious online and offline activities they engage in. The online radicalization of Zachary Chesser is a good example of this lone wolf terrorist, where he promoted violent extremist messages while also trying to join Al Shabab unsuccessfully a couple of times. He was eventually identified and arrested while attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group making him easily detectable to law enforcement radar. Community policing and law enforcement counter-terrorism efforts should be aware of what is considered lone wolf terrorist actors as they are easily detectable and their plans easily foiled by collaborative efforts such as in the cases of Aldawsari and Chesser.

Conclusion

Terror attacks negatively impact communities, and terror threats persist in the country. This is, according to the Global Terrorism Database that indicates that there has been at least one terrorist attack in each state between 1970 and 2001, and approximately 200 attacks after this period. Community policing continues to be an ever-growing and powerful means to defeat determined enemies as efforts are purposed to cut across lines of race, region, and religion in order to prevent extremist attacks and minimize the chances of individuals radicalizing to violence.

References

Guler, A. (2016). Fighting terrorism through community policing. Middle East Review of Public Administration,( 2)1;1-20

Helfstein, S. (2012). Edges of radicalization: Individuals, Networks and Ideas in violent extremism. Combatting Terrorism at West Point. Retrieved from http://www.jstor/stable/rresrep05592

International Association of Chiefs of Police. (2014). Using community policing to counter violent extremism: Five key principles for law enforcement. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

Shuurman, B., Lindekilde, L., Maltahner, S., O’Connor, F.,Gill, P. & Bouhana, N. (2019). End of the lone wolf: The typology that should not have been. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism(42)8, 771-778