Red, orange, yellow, blue and green are the colors used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to communicate whether the risk of terrorism is severe, high, elevated, guarded or low. Yet, when these colors trickle down from the federal level to state and local law enforcement agencies that put them into effect, the colors lose meaning and become, well, colors.
“What does orange mean? Realistically?” said Leslie Kennedy, Ph.D., dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers-Newark. “They [state and local law enforcement] are very interested in knowing how to respond to things on a national level.”
Michael Wagers, executive director of the Police Institute at Rutgers-Newark, pinpointed the problem in securing the nation’s homeland on the local level. “There is a lot of frustration among the chiefs about the lack of information and lack of cooperation from the Feds,” he said. Among police there is also, he added, a disconnect among local agencies that can isolate municipal police departments from each other. Wagers cited two causes for this disconnect: the lack of a formal communications network and lack of personal relationships.
To bridge these gaps, researchers at the Police Institute and the Center for the Study of Terrorism, both part of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers-Newark, along with security executives and municipal and state police leaders, formed the Counterterrorism Information Sharing Consortium (CISC). On the first Tuesday of each month, police leaders along the Interstate-95 corridor, from Maryland to Boston, converge at Rutgers-Newark with a common goal—share tactics and information to combat terrorism.
“This is new territory—for everyone,” Wagers said. “The people who need to develop the plan are the local agencies and the people within the local agencies. Our goal is to get them together, have them think through that process and to figure out what they need, their goals and how they want to go forward in doing that.”
Before moving forward, Wagers said local authorities have to become acquainted with one another. “It’s about having these relationships and knowing whom to call within the agencies to share information,” he said. “That’s the problem they’re having—they don’t know each other.” Hypothetically, a reporter asked, does a Newark police detective know whom to call in the New Jersey State Police about a specific terrorist problem? In response, Wagers threw up his hands in a gesture that suggested it’s anyone’s guess.
Such a connection among local law enforcement, Wagers emphasized, is paramount before firmly establishing communication with the more bureaucratic federal government. “If you have an 800-pound gorilla beating on your door, we have to show them a model as to how we do business,” he said, paraphrasing one CSIC consortium member.
The consortium was organized by Dr. George Kelling, a veteran and influential analyst of law enforcement, now a professor at the School of Criminal Justice and faculty chair of the Police Institute. After hearing complaints from state and local police chiefs about the lack of information sharing, Kelling assembled and chaired two organizational meetings in New York City held at the Manhattan Institute, a research think tank, during the summer and fall of 2002. The consortium then held its first official meeting in December 2002 at the Newark Police Department.
“It didn’t go well because the agencies felt uncomfortable being on the Newark Police Department’s home turf,” Wagers said. The consortium now meets at the Police Institute, which serves as a “neutral convener” by providing a nonpartisan environment, provides refreshments and offers administrative support.
What makes the CISC interesting is that the police participants set the agenda for and run the meetings. Kennedy remarked that the consortium is really about law enforcement talking about issues that are important to them “as opposed to responding to some other government agency, responding to mandates or issues that are directed from afar or from above.” This type of communication is vital to police, he explained, because they have a tendency to learn from each other.
Wagers believes strong communication is the ultimate tool in preventing terrorism. “People don’t understand that a lot of stuff involving terrorists isn’t—at least on the local level—this secret agent, intelligence gathering, sniffing around alleyways in the dark,” he said. “It’s individuals who are involved in terrorist acts, just like other criminals are involved in other types of criminal behavior. It’s making sure you recognize these acts and are able to piece them together with other communities.”
Both Wagers and Kennedy noted that there are similarities between terrorism and other criminal activity—such as organized crime, narcotics trafficking and gangs—in movement and money laundering. Databases conceived by the New Jersey State Police to fight gangs and narcotics trafficking are being adapted to fight terrorism. A presentation on the New Jersey database impressed agencies from Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maryland, he continued, because they didn’t have anything like it. He explained that the database was meant to be used internally within the state police, but it could expand statewide to local agencies. Because it’s a Web-based system, there are possibilities it could be shared nationally.
Kennedy sees the CISC as a success because of the attendance numbers—its membership includes representatives from 39 law enforcement agencies lining the critical northeast I-95 corridor. “It’s easy to get the people from New Jersey,” Wagers said. “To get people from the Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police, Maryland State Police driving into Newark for these meetings shows their commitment.” Each agency must cover its own travel and lodging costs to Newark. The consortium, through funding from the Police Institute, only pays for meeting refreshments and parking.
Yet, for Wagers, action as well as numbers will determine the consortium’s ultimate success. “The thing that will drive this project and make it successful is when there are examples around the table where agencies have shared information and it has led to preventing a terrorist attack or prosecuting a terrorist,” he said.
As part of an academic institution, the Police Institute will eventually collect and analyze the patterns and trends of terrorism and more politically oriented crimes. Kennedy’s goal is to identify these patterns and offer solutions back to law enforcement to prevent them from happening. “We’re trying to work with these different agencies to talk about incidents and the context in which incidents occur,” he said. “To talk about what you can do to reduce the chance of these incidents.”
The Institute receives strong monetary support from the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. To fund the academic analysis, the Police Institute and the Center for the Study of Terrorism coauthored and submitted a grant proposal to the National Institute of Justice. Kennedy hopes that CISC membership will open up to include representatives from the public health and corporate sectors—both share similar concerns in preventing bioterrorism and the hacking of corporate security and assets. “The question right now is not only getting these people to talk to one another, to exchange ideas,” he said, “but also getting everyone on the same page.”
For now, the consortium’s major goal is to provide a place where state and local law enforcement can meet to share ideals and tactics. Listening to the issues that concern them gives academics, such as Wagers and Kennedy, the insight into the human factors behind the statistics that are part of combating crime. “I’m learning the dynamics about what the cops want to talk about to one another.”
As Wagers put it, “We trust the practitioners and not just people who sit behind computers looking at data and coming up with ideas and theories.” He added, “It’s the cop, probation officer and social worker that have the ideas to solve problems. When thinking bubbles up from the ground, it’s more likely to succeed than when it trickles down from the top.”
Donna Zukowski is a journalism and media studies student at Rutgers-Newark.
