More DHS failure.
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Majority of Americans Unaware of DHS Program to Report Potential Terrorist Activity, Survey Finds
By: Anthony Kimery
04/16/2013 (12:39pm)
A new survey released only hours before Monday's horrific terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon found that more than 56 percent of Americans said
they'd never heard anything about the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign.
And while an additional 20 percent said they were not sure whether they had heard anything about it, "clear majorities of respondents said that would be willing to meet with DHS (57 percent) or local police (58 percent) to talk about terrorism," the study found.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the survey.
The findings of the DHS-funded survey and accompanying analysis that were performed by the University of Maryland-based National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) are made more important in the context of Monday's bombings that killed 3 and injured more than 170.
Federal officials have been stressing the urgency of people in Boston -- especially those in and around the marathon route -- to report the slightest thing they might have considered to have been suspicious.
Counterterrorism intelligence authorities have told Homeland Security Today that local intelligence is critical to connecting the dots in terrorism investigations.
"Fifty percent of the 'dots' that prevent the next 9/11 will come from bottom-up [local] level observation" and unconventional intelligence from "private sector parties," said veteran intelligence officer Robert David Steele.
Since 9/11, DHS and law enforcement in the Washington, DC capital region have actively urged citizens to report "suspicious activity" and launched a nationwide program to urge the public, businesses and law enforcement to report suspicious activity that could be indicative of terrorist activity.
The Institute for Homeland Security Solutions (IHSS) stated in its April 2011 research report, Building on Clues: Methods to Help State and Local Law Enforcement Detect and Characterize Terrorist Activity, that 80 percent of foiled terrorist plots were discovered as a result of tips and clues from law enforcement or the general public, and documented the key role that state and local law enforcement play in preventing terrorist attacks.
"The terrorist and criminal alike are constrained by the laws of physics that we all are … they both operate in the city streets and towns, committing non-terrorist crimes that if caught by a trained officer could lead to a much bigger crime picture," said Oklahoma City-based Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) Executive Director David Cid, a former FBI counterterrorism specialist.
MIPT has developed a DHS-funded training program for law enforcement called Information Collection on Patrol (InCOP), the goal of which is to improve the quantity and detail of observation and reporting of suspicious activity by street cops.
InCOP suggests that "all crime is local" and improves the quantity and quality of reporting by the line officer, a methodology that is supported by the IHSS report that examined open-source material on foiled and executed plots against US targets to determine the types of information and activities that led to or could have led to their discovery.
The IHSS study concluded "that law enforcement, assisted by the public, is generally the first line of defense in detecting terrorist plots. In over 80 percent of the foiled plots in our dataset, the initial clue came from law enforcement (20 federal cases and 15 state/local cases) or from public reporting (20 cases)."
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the 2011 annual meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) that the "threat of homegrown violent extremism fundamentally changes who is positioned to spot, investigate and respond to terrorist activity."
"We have continued to see the value of public awareness and the importance of having suspicious activities quickly forwarded to the [various] Joint Terrorism Task Forces for investigation time and again," Napolitano said.
"Indeed, it was an alert street vendor in Times Square that helped thwart an attempted attack in May 2010 by reporting a suspicious vehicle to law enforcement," Napolitano said, adding, "in January [2011], alert city workers in Spokane, Washington reported a suspicious backpack and prevented what almost certainly would have been a deadly bombing along a busy parade route."
And, "more recently," she continued, "a store employee in Killeen, Texas reported the suspicious behavior of one of his customers to authorities, potentially averting another deadly attack at the Fort Hood Army Base."
It's for such reasons that federal, state and local law enforcement have repeated their pleas to the public to provide them with videos and photographs that could provide clues to who was responsible for the bombings at the Boston Marathon.
DHS's "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign was designed to raise public awareness -- street-level intelligence, if you will -- of indicators of terrorism and terrorism-related crime, and to emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious activity to the proper law enforcement authorities.
"Of those who had heard something about [DHS's "If You See Something, Say Something"] campaign, most thought it would be very (18 percent) or somewhat (67 percent) effective," the START report said.
But because of the majority of respondents who said they'd never heard of the DHS program, START recommended that DHS increase its "marketing for the 'If You See Something, Say Something' campaign, which is positively perceived by those [who are] aware of it."
START said doing so "would likely benefit DHS."
Counterterrorism and law enforcement officials agree. In the wake of the bombings in Boston, officials have said DHS's "If You See Something, Say Something" program needs to be reinvigorated and more aggresively promoted.
START's survey and accompanying report, US Attitudes towards Terrorism and Counterterrorism -- prepared for DHS's Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate's Resilient Systems Division -- revealed that about 15 percent of those surveyed had thought about the prospect of domestic terrorism during the preceding week. And that was "significantly more than the percentage who said they thought about the possibility of hospitalization (10 percent) or violent crime victimization (10 percent)," the report said.
Supported in part by DHS's S&T Directorate through a Center of Excellence program at the University of Maryland, START uses state‐of‐the‐art theories, methods and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve understanding of the origins, dynamics and social and psychological impacts of terrorism.
START said its DHS-funded survey "offers support for increased levels of community engagement between DHS, local law enforcement and local communities, as the results [of the survey] suggest considerable willingness for such engagement exists among the US public."
"Almost a quarter of those who said they had thought about terrorism reported that it made them extremely or very worried," START said.
Intended to provide baseline information about beliefs and attitudes on terrorism and counterterrorism in the US, the survey was developed by leading survey methodologists in consultation with experts in terrorism, counterterrorism and community resilience, the survey was completed by 1,576 individuals 18 years of age and older last fall. START said it will conduct a second survey this year.
The START survey is important because it found more Americans still worry about terrorist attacks than they do violent crime victimization or hospitalization despite the widespread attention on violent gun-related crimes in recent months and the Obama administration's insistence that Al Qaeda is decimated and no longer poses a serious threat to the homeland.
START Director Gary LaFree, the lead author of the report, told Homeland Security Today "Part of the explanation [for the publics' concern about terrorism] may be the tremendous job that government has done in preventing terrorism since 9/11." LaFree explained that "there has been an enormous increase in foiled plots, so, even while attacks may be down, the community has heard much more about foiled plots."
"Improved understanding of public attitudes can inform programs and tools related to managing public risk perception, increasing effectiveness of pre-and post-event communication by federal, state and local officials, and building and supporting more resilient social networks within and across communities," said LaFree.
The survey found that "A large majority of respondents said that the US government has been very effective (33 percent) or somewhat effective (54 percent) at preventing terrorism, despite the fact that 69 percent endorsed the view that 'terrorists will always find a way to carry out major attacks no matter what the US government does.'"
The survey further found "that clear majorities of respondents were willing to meet with local police or officials from DHS to discuss terrorism, data which suggest that community outreach programs may be a viable strategy for countering violent extremism in the United States.
More than 41 percent of the survey respondents said they'd be "very likely" to notify police if they heard "a person talking about joining a terrorist group."
More than 76 percent said they'd "very likely" call the police if they heard "a person talking about planting explosives in public place."
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