Spies Among Us
Despite a troubled history, police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary Americans
Good or bad, intelligence gathering by local police departments is back. Interviews with police officers, homeland security officials, and privacy experts reveal a transformation among state and local law enforcement.
Among the changes:
Since 9/11, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have poured over a half-billion dollars into building up local and state police intelligence operations. The funding has helped create more than 100 police intelligence units reaching into nearly every state.
To qualify for federal homeland security grants, states were told to assemble lists of "potential threat elements"--individuals or groups suspected of possible terrorist activity. In response, state authorities have come up with thousands of loosely defined targets, ranging from genuine terrorists to biker gangs and environmentalists.
Guidelines for protecting privacy and civil liberties have lagged far behind the federal money. After four years of doling out homeland security grants to police departments, federal officials released guidelines for the conduct of local intelligence operations only last year; the standards are voluntary and are being implemented slowly.
The resurgence of police intelligence operations is being accompanied by a revolution in law enforcement computing. Rap sheets, intelligence reports, and public records are rapidly being pooled into huge, networked computer databases. Much of this is a boon to crime fighting, but privacy advocates say the systems are wide open to abuse.
Behind the windfall in federal funding is broad agreement in Washington on two areas: first, that local cops are America's front line of defense against terrorism; and second, that the law enforcement and intelligence communities must do a far better job of sharing information with state and local police. As a report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police stressed: "All terrorism is local." Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was arrested by a state trooper after a traffic stop. And last year, local police in Torrance, Calif., thwarted what the FBI says could have been America's worst incident since 9/11--planned attacks on military sites and synagogues in and around Los Angeles by homegrown jihadists.
The numbers tell the story: There are over 700,000 local, state, and tribal police officers in the United States, compared with only 12,000 FBI agents. But getting the right information to all those eyes and ears hasn't gone especially well. The government's failure at "connecting the dots," as the 9/11 commission put it, was key to the success of al Qaeda's fateful hijackings in 2001. Three of the hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, were pulled over in traffic stops before the attacks, yet local cops had no inkling they might be on terrorist watch lists. A National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, released by the Justice Department in 2003, found no shortage of problems in sharing information among local law enforcement: a lack of trust and communication; lack of funding for a national intelligence network; lack of database connectivity; a shortage of intelligence analysts, software, and training; and a lack of standards and policies.
The flood of post-9/11 funding and attention, however, has started making a difference, officials say. Indeed, it has catalyzed reforms already underway in state and local law enforcement, giving a boost to what reformers call intelligence-led policing--a kind of 21st-century crime fighting driven by computer databases, intelligence gathering, and analysis. "This is a new paradigm, a new philosophy of policing," says the LAPD's Bratton, who previously served as chief of the New York Police Department. In that job, Bratton says, he spent 5 percent of his time on counterterrorism; today, in Los Angeles, he spends 50 percent. The key to counterterrorism work, Bratton adds, is intelligence.
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