Hard Won Lessons: The New Paradigm - Merging Law Enforcement with Counterterrorism Strategies

Publication Date: January 2006

Publisher: Safe Cities Initiative

Author(s): Mark Riebling

Research Area: Government; Justice; Military and defense; Social conditions

Keywords: counterterrorism; Intelligence-Led Policing

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

"State and local police operate today in a new and strangely dangerous world. Law-enforcement
officers confront threats more technologically complex, and geographically diverse, than any they
have ever faced. Although militant Islam is the most widely publicized new threat, it thrives within a
wider dissatisfaction with American values, brought home to Main-Street America by globalization.How does a local police officer get all these things and use them in an age of global threats?

For three years, under the aegis of the Safe Cities Initiative, law enforcement leaders throughout the
United States have been meeting to consider this question. This document distills what they have
learned. It describes how state and local police are merging crime-control and counterterrorism
models in their daily work, creating a new paradigm for policing. Ed Flynn, chief of the Massachusetts
State Police, calls it "hometown security." "