Policing Terrorism: The Response of Local Police Agencies to Homeland Security Concerns

Abstract

Policing has always been responsive to social and attitudinal shifts in society. Beginning with the shift to modern policing, systems of policing have changed in important ways in a relatively short period of time. Most recently, scholars, practitioners, and elected officials have called for a new paradigm shift in policing. In response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 some have called upon the police to take a more active stance in counter terrorism initiatives and move toward a homeland security model of policing, a system that emphasizes intelligence gathering, covert investigations, information sharing, and immigration enforcement. The findings from this study suggest that local police departments operationalize homeland security priorities to varying degrees. Data from this study revealed that the police agencies under study did not make attempts to move toward a homeland security focus. While none of the agencies completely disregarded homeland security efforts, the majority of agencies continued to conduct business as usual. What did change was the level of cooperation with federal agencies and information sharing. This change was fostered, in major part, by the increased participation in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program. In the final part of the analysis, police officer perceptions concerning the ability of community policing to adequately respond to the threat of terrorism are explored.