EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University is teaching the nation’s police how to work together to sniff out and stop terrorism – a task that has taken on special significance with the emergence of dozens of terrorism-focused “fusion centers.
The centers, supported by the Department of Homeland Security, are meant to link the intelligence-gathering efforts of local, state and federal authorities. That’s a drastic change from the pre-9/11 days when individual police departments and state and federal agencies largely worked alone, said David Carter, director of MSU’s Intelligence Program and professor of criminal justice.
“One of the criticisms in the 9/11 Commission Report was the lack of information sharing – that agencies weren’t able to connect the dots, they weren’t doing analysis and they weren’t able to get the right information in the right hands,” Carter said.
“The new philosophy is to get the information in all the right hands. We want to get as much information out there as possible in order to catch the bad guys.”
Supported by $7.5 million in Homeland Security grants, Carter and his staff began providing intelligence training in mid-2005 and, to date, have trained more than 2,000 officers from 1,200 agencies in 43 states and three countries. As the nation’s sole provider of the training, Carter’s team instructs everyone from county sheriffs to city and tribal police to university public safety officers.
The ongoing establishment of the fusion centers in many states has further created a need for cross-department training. At Michigan’s fledgling center – called the Michigan Intelligence Operation Center for Homeland Security – State Police detectives work side-by-side with authorities from the FBI, National Guard, MSU and city and county police departments.
The fusion center opened in early 2007 at the Michigan State Police headquarters in East Lansing, and is directed by Mary Pekrul, a detective first lieutenant with the State Police. Pekrul helped Carter refine the Intelligence Program curriculum and has sent many of her officers through the training.
Pekrul said the program is helping “break down the barriers” between law enforcement agencies.
“Intelligence is a preventive tool and that’s not really inherent to police work – police work is inherently reactionary,” Pekrul said. “But in the world of law enforcement, if a terrorist act happens, it’s too late. And the fact that it did happen means your intelligence didn’t work. The goal of this center is to prevent and disrupt criminal and terrorist activity, and the way we do that is by analyzing information and then getting it out to the people that need it.”
Mary Johnson, an MSU Police inspector and a liaison to the Michigan fusion center, said the training gives agencies a standard blueprint from which to operate. Because Carter’s team essentially “trains the trainers” at the individual departments, it’s up to officials such as Johnson to continue the training.
“It’s kind of like planting the seed,” Johnson said. “David Carter is planting that seed all over and we’re trying to grow it and take it out with us to spread the word.”
While the main thrust of the program is counterterrorism, the training also covers violent and organized crime and offenses such as counterfeiting and drug smuggling – crimes often linked to terrorism. Another focus of the two-day training session is the protection of citizens’ privacy and civil rights.
Ed McGarrell, director of MSU’s School of Criminal Justice and an Intelligence Program trainer, said MSU “has long been recognized as a leader in policing innovation.”
“This was true for community-police relations during the 1960s as well as the pioneering efforts in community policing during the 1980s and 1990s,” McGarrell said. “MSU has also demonstrated its ability to deliver research-based training and education on a national basis through Project Safe Neighborhoods, and I believe that experience gave DHS confidence that we could deliver a high-quality program.”
Carter said he expects the training to continue for up to three more years under the current funding. Future training will take his team from Arizona to New Jersey to Puerto Rico. While it’s infeasible to train all 16,000 police agencies in the United States, Carter hopes to educate as many as possible.
In his three years of training officers from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Carter said he’s already seen a vast improvement in the way they approach terrorism intelligence. “It has certainly gotten a whole lot better,” he said. “The improvement of training and the level of awareness have increased dramatically during that time.”
Listen to a podcast with Carter at: http://spartanpodcast.com/?p=384.
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