You’ve been one of the most public practitioners of community policing. Do you see these strategies contributing to more and more homeland security strategies?

Oh certainly. Early on after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, they were really not particularly interested in giving local police or state police a seat at the table. The idea was that dealing with terrorism was really going to be worked at the federal government level. They really didn’t have a sense of what the role of local police [was] going to be.

I remember when I was the chief of police of Los Angeles, I and other major city police chiefs pounded on DHS’s door, first with Gov. [Tom] Ridge and then with [Secretary Michael] Chertoff, that they had to engage us. We finally got in and said, “You have to have us at the table.”

There are not enough federal agencies and federal employees to deal with terrorism. The potential of homegrown terrorism is just as significant as the external threat of al Qaeda. We effectively forced our way into the room and did get a seat at the table and Secretary Chertoff, and now his successor, has embraced the importance of hometown security as part of our overall homeland security effort.

That’s been reinforced by the fact that in a recent study done by DHS, 75 percent of the detected cases of terrorism were in fact initially detected through the actions of local community residents and local police rather than federal agencies. If we did not effectively partner vertically as well as horizontally, we would have missed many of those early-on indicators of terrorist acts and plots being developed.

That finding was incredible, because many still tend to think of the federal government as having the principal role of protecting us against terrorism. That study reinforced just how important local police and the general public are in this fight. [Editors’ note: The study mentioned above was completed by the Institute for Homeland Security Solutions, October 2010, and is called, “Building on Clues: Examining Successes and Failures in Detecting U.S. Terrorist Plots, 1999-2009.” It can be accessed at: www.ihssnc.org/portals/0/Building_on_Clues_Strom.pdf]

 

As you mentioned, information sharing between intelligence agencies and local law enforcement is an area of concern. Are we getting better at this?

We are a work in progress. There are so many things that impact the ability to be truly transparent between federal, state, and local levels. You have various sunshine laws in different states that preclude the sharing of information. There is still the issue of who gets access to different levels of sensitive information.

There is the example of the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC, before it moved out to where it’s now located. It had the high side of the building and the low side. The idea was that we local authorities were only allowed on the low side. A lot of our people had the same [security] clearances as federal folks on the high side, but they couldn’t go through the door onto the high side. So the unwillingness to take advantage of the local expertise that these police officers had and were assigned ended up being a significant detriment to getting a total picture of the potential impact of intelligence and information relative to a specific geographic area.

We’ve come a long way. Those local law enforcement people now have access to the low side and the high side. There is a lot more sharing through the 70-some-odd fusion centers that we have established nationwide, but there is more that can be done. There is less resistance, but some of the limitations once again are the concerns with some of our sunshine laws.

I still think there is some reticence, particularly at the federal level, about what information is shared and deciding what is important to share. At the same time, the recent changing of the threat-level color-coding system that had been put in place in Secretary Ridge’s tenure is an effort to improve that. Instead of the entire country going to a green, red, or yellow and orange [threat] level, it’s now much more city- or location-specific.

That is a reflection of how far we’ve come, because the old system was a reflection of not wanting to share information. There was no ability to identify where the sourcing came from.

In the old days authorities would not have made that information public. They would have put it out in a very vague fashion or might not put it out at all. However, they made the information public and made it quite clear that it was a sole informant that they had at the moment. Those are examples of how far we’ve come. Ten years ago none of that would have happened.

As chief of police in Los Angeles, I wanted to get information on suspicious activity that was as specific to my city or as specific to a location in my area. We might have informed the rest of the country to know about that activity in the event there might be a duplicate plot under way. The idea is that if the threat is specific to you, you can do something about it.

A few months ago, right around the time of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, there was news of a reliable informant who had specific information about specific locations and activities in the United States that were going to be targeted for terrorist acts. Unfortunately they could not confirm his information through another informant.

In the old days authorities would not have made that information public. They would have put it out in a very vague fashion or might not put it out at all. However, they made the information public and made it quite clear that it was a sole informant that they had at the moment. Those are examples of how far we’ve come. Ten years ago none of that would have happened.

 

What’s the biggest misconception that the intelligence agencies have about local law enforcement?

Early on after 9/11 it was the idea that they didn’t have anything to bring to the table. At that time, the effort was still focused outside the borders of the United States. We have come to see over the last 10 years that the threat from within the United States is probably more significant than the external threat at this particular time. Al Qaeda has been increasingly forced to go underground and been unable to … put together a coordinated attack since 9/11. They are now seeking to inspire attacks by people whom they are able to recruit within the United States through their websites and through their other methods. I think the intelligence community will slowly come around to the importance of actually working with and trusting local law enforcement.

Speaking from my experience in the LAPD, I can tell you that some of the people I had in my counterterrorism operations were as sharp as anybody in the federal government agencies. One of those people, Michael Downing, headed up my counterterrorism unit. He is one of the more respected people in the counterterrorism business by those in the local ranks as well as those in federal agencies.

 

What is the biggest lesson we’ve not learned from 9/11?

I don’t know that I have an answer to that one. As I look at it, [we] are so far advanced versus where we were pre-9/11. I think we’ve learned the lessons in partnership and collaboration. We’ve learned the lessons of looking inward as well [as] outward – that the threat of terrorism is not just going to be an external threat.

In tight budget times, local law enforcement’s embrace of the importance of homeland security is critical. There’s also an awareness of the “[If You] See Something, Say Something™” campaign; the potential for growth in the number of fusion centers and police officers being trained through the SARS system.

The lesson that was not learned after the first New York World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was, I think … that we felt we’d won … There was this one group [the terrorists] that were living here and they pulled this off [the bombing] and we got them through American policing.

I think even the federal government went back to focusing externally and did not recognize that there were things going on internally in this country, but I don’t think there’s anything that comes to mind in the sense of lessons unlearned for me.