Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security - Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism Panel II

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security - Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism Panel II

SEN. LIEBERMAN: We'll now call our second panel to the table. That will be deputy chief Michael Downing, Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department; Mayor Michael Ronczkowski -- excuse me -- I don't know whether I elevated you or demoted you; it's Major, not Mayor -- Major Michael Ronczkowski, Homeland Security Bureau, Miami-Dade Police Department; and Major Thomas Dailey, Homeland Security Division of the Kansas City Police Department.

We thank you very much. You've traveled some distance to be here. But in each of your cases, based on the investigation our committee has done, your departments are doing very important work that we both wanted to give some national attention to but frankly we ought to -- also wanted to learn from.

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SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thanks very much, Major. Appreciate the testimony. Again, I appreciate all you're doing.

Major Dailey, appreciate your coming from Kansas City to tell us what the Homeland Security Division there is doing about the problem of homegrown Islamist terrorism.

MR. DAILEY: Thank you, Senators. Good to be here.

Good to see a familiar face, Senator McCaskill.

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO): Great to see you.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Did she prosecute you, or did you prosecute her? (Laughter.)

MR. DAILEY: Actually, she was a great ally.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I'm sure she was, I know. She's a great addition to the Senate.

MR. DAILEY: I've been accused of not being able to introduce myself in 10 minutes, so let me just try to hit the highlights of our concerns.

Our counterterrorism --

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Major, do me a favor and move that mike right close to you so we can hear you well. In other words, move it -- no, move it right directionally. That's good, thanks.

MR. DAILEY: How's that?

And talk about -- demonstrate the need for a national model for police agencies.

We find violent Islamic extremism to be a fluid and ever-evolving threat. And terrorists' operations have become more subtle and sophisticated, and necessitates a constant adaptation by police agencies and law enforcement. And there's no section of this country that's immune from the influence of Islamic extremism.

You know, we're centered in the middle of the nation. We have a metropolitan area of about 1.7 million people. And our adversary is a silent, careful group disguised as legitimate Islamic organizations and charities. There's a high geographic concentration of refugees from East African countries who are predominantly Muslim. Within this group my be individuals who have stolen the identity of refugees to gain entry into this country. There is a possibility that exists that members of terrorist organizations and those posing as their family members are now residing in our community. And this issue is certainly complicated by the fact deportation of a refugee is very difficult due to the refugee status.

We find a concentration -- more of a concentration of Middle Eastern immigrants, and some refugees, that are based around the Islamic religious centers. Many of them are intensely loyal to their homeland and their religious beliefs. They have established businesses and immerse themselves into the community, but they still may have sympathies with terrorist organizations as it relates to conflicts in their homeland. Some individuals have been identified that have ties back to terrorist organizations and may be conduits for fundraising, recruitment or terrorist acts.

One of the areas of concern in Kansas City include an environment created for the support of terrorism through fundraising. It involves criminal predicates of acquiring money and material through activities such as fraud, forgery, money structuring and laundering. The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department Intelligence Unit incorporates detectives trained in financial investigations, which adds an important component in our investigative capabilities. Our Counter Terrorism Patrol Strategy that I'll describe in a little bit incorporates the importance of recognizing and noting financial transaction records by patrol officers. Important also in this process is a very close working relationship with the U.S. attorneys' office, which includes regular consultation with them.

Another concern is the criminals that we know whose parole stipulations prohibit them from associating with each other or using "freedom of religion" to gather and may use this opportunity to further criminal endeavors and may offer a route to the radicalization process.

We talked at length already about the Internet, and I'm going to skip over some of that. It certainly is the new recruitment and training camp, and makes it a lot easier for this radicalization process to take place. But I would also add that the Internet and the media, I believe, provides a shortcut to the radicalization process that was outlined for you, through imitation. And I would just offer the recent campus shootings, school shootings, as -- and I could go into -- I could spend an hour on the relationship of the gangs and what happened in that evolved -- how that evolved to what may evolve in the imitation process.

We've worked very hard to develop counterterrorism strategies and to build bridges and enhance partnerships with the legitimate Muslim- American community. Many of the ideas and the initiatives for our strategy were a result of exposure to the successes, the failures and the gaps in the counterterrorism efforts and strategies at the national level that I studied while attending the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which is an outstanding program, and it's a DHS-funded program.

The prevention of terrorism is a result of a working intelligence cycle, and it's our goal to engage all our officers and citizens in this effort as force multiplier, if you will. The foundation of our strategy is centered around the Kansas City Police Department Counter Terrorism Patrol Strategy, the Kansas City Regional Terrorism Early Warning Center, the Kansas City Police Department Intelligence Unit, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And I think it's important to really just highlight how this patrol strategy came about as it relates to a national -- the need for a national model. The 2002, the National Strategy for Homeland Security outlined three strategic objectives. And two of the three had to do with prevention of terrorism and the deterrence of terrorism. And in 2003, when this -- when we started looking at this, it was found that most local law enforcement efforts and funding were directed towards the response to terrorist attacks, and most prevention efforts were aimed at developing intelligence analysis centers. To my knowledge, there were no known prevention or deterrence models for local law enforcement agencies to implement that standardized training or strategy for the detection, identification, the reporting or interdiction, of potential terrorists.

I developed this proposal and met with the chief and our Kansas City Police Department executive command staff, and they supported it wholeheartedly. And I think that is an absolute key point that was brought out earlier, that any of these initiatives will fail without the continued support and encouragement of the chief and key decision- makers. And that commitment to counterterrorism was further demonstrated when Chief Jim Corwin, who was my deputy chief when I brought this proposal to him, became chief. He initiated and created the Homeland Security Division in 2004.

This project was initiated with the goal of translating current successful policing and investigative techniques into terrorism prevention tactics rather than try to reinvent the wheel. The basis of the strategy was a great document, the Office of Domestic Preparedness Guidelines for Homeland Security, 2003," and it consisted of a booklet of key actions and tasks representing a framework for prevention, but it was written from a perspective for all agencies, all jurisdictions.

And it's our belief that terrorism and the activities by their nature are a criminal act. Local police departments should look to the tactics and strategies that have proven effective in fighting crime as a basis for combating terrorism.

We extracted the task out of this document that would apply to local law enforcement, and we had a whole wall full of sticky notes of tasks and activities, and we clustered and framed them into general components. And there were five areas we identified as components for this strategy.

One was the prevention of prevention and deterrence activities and tactics. The second was community oriented policing activities. The third was training for the officers and the community. The fourth was data collection and information sharing. And a component for project evaluation.

And in those five component areas, we found traditional policing methods and skills and tactics that we were already using that would carry out these project objectives were defining suspicious behaviors and activities; identifying and targeting possible suspects, associates and organizations; consensual stops and specific questioning; collecting and analyzing intelligence information; deploying resources and hardening areas of vulnerability; using countersurveillance and the screening of people entering large public events; educating and enlisting the public's health in gathering suspect information; and using financial analysis techniques to investigate suspect organization.

In order to identify and incorporate the most successful policing tactics and take advantage of the collective expertise that already exists in most agencies, we identified various units within the police department and representatives designated and gave them the challenge to assist in developing these concepts, applying research results and translating their experience into prevention and detection activities. And I won't go through all of them, but some of the people we incorporated were from Patrol, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Gang Unit, Career Criminal Unit, Narcotics Interdiction, our Community Oriented Policing Units, our Training Division, Computer Unit, Planning and Research, and numerous others.

Upon completion of this project, the information was put into training modules for pre-service, or the academy, and in-service training for Kansas City Police Department officers and community groups.

An understanding on how terrorists operate through pre-incident indicators and characteristics, we think, are a key to preventing terrorism. And I have included a description of the module on that, and I certainly won't go through that. But the idea was to use case studies, and I was interested in the New York report because they did the same thing. And we use that during the training as a mean(s) to understand terrorism acts that have occurred; what could have been done to prevent those acts at an earlier stage, in the identification stage; or case studies where terrorism was prevented and what they did. And we incorporated those and culled from that patrol tactics.

The patrol strategy establishes a clear structure for reporting which was missing and is missing in most agencies. And again, I won't go through the modules.

A very important piece of this strategy is in outreach and applied community oriented policing. It's already been -- and most police departments pooh-poohed community policing when it was introduced over a decade ago. It has been demonstrated that -- since then that when the community and the police regularly join in problem solving, that it does result in specific crime problem reduction, the fear of crime is reduced, and we believe the same philosophy can be implemented to counter the threat of radical Islamic terrorism and domestic terrorism.

It is recognized, it's important to have members of the Muslim community and all communities as part of our efforts. We've had specific open-forum meetings with members of the Muslim community. For example, after 9/11, we had a city-wide forum to discuss the repercussions from the 9/11 attack and how we can assist them and the whole community in coming together to prevent any repercussions. In areas where there is a high concentration of Muslim immigrants -- especially, most recently, from East Africa -- officers are in regular contact and conduct neighborhood meetings.

We train the officers to build partnerships and trust, which has already been mentioned as a key, as well as methods for cultivating resources within those communities.

And again, the community policing module is included in the information.

One piece of it is worth mentioning. We have developed community presentations for community groups, business groups, security companies, landlords. We have yet to have a community meeting where we didn't have somebody come up afterwards with some kind of suspicious activity they wanted to relate to us.

The culmination of this effort is the information gathering, analysis, and the sharing process. And of course, the single objective of this is to give advance warning of those who may be involved in the process leading up to committing acts of terror, what may happen -- indications and warnings -- and what may be done to prevent them.

And for this to take place, it's critical that possible terrorism information gathered from all the sources be routed to the regional information-sharing or analysis agency, but also the state and the feds. And right now, for example, currently, when information is received through the Kansas City Police Department communications or from department personnel that requires immediate investigation, it's routed to our intelligence unit, who respond to the -- where the call came from for investigation.

Suspicious activity reports are routed to the intelligence unit and the Kansas City Regional Terrorism Early Warning Center for analysis. Any information that is linked to an open case or may be a credible threat is routed to the JTTF for follow up. The terrorism early warning is not an operational arm. We use JTTF as the operational component.

We operate in concert with the FBI, and we have personnel assigned to the JTTF, which includes DHS agencies as part of the intelligence cycle. And the FBI, in turn, will, in the near future, have personnel assigned to our TEW.

The -- we belong to a nine-county regional homeland security coordinating committee. And the TEW, which is partially funded through DHS, was established as a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional analysis center. The analysis center ensures a coordinated flow of intelligence to and from all sectors and levels of government. Of course, the desired end of this effort is the ability to view raw data from all sectors of the community and provide analytical insights with specific and actionable informational products. The TEW distributes intelligence bulletins and training bulletins several times a week, or sooner if needed.

The executive committee -- the TEW Executive Committee that establishes a policy is comprised of local and county first responders, federal agencies, private sector. And this was done to reach as many segments of the community as possible and create an information conduit.

And also --

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Excuse me for interrupting.

MR. DAILEY: Yes.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: If you can bring it to a close pretty soon, because we're going to have votes later this morning. I want to give everybody a chance to ask some questions.

MR. DAILEY: We're almost done.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Okay. (Chuckles.)

MR. DAILEY: The bottom line of this, it's critical to close these gaps between those who are gathering the information, those who connect the dots, and those who are on the street and have -- the most likely to encounter terrorism.

To date, this has resulted in numerous leads and contributed to the cause -- to cases leading to indictments, and furthered the effort of identifying those who constitute a terrorism threat.

This Counter Terrorism Patrol Strategy was very labor-intensive. It took us over a year to complete. The Bureau of Justice (sic) states there's over 15,000 local, county and state police agencies, and the smaller agencies don't have the resources to develop a comprehensive strategy. And it would be our recommendation that DHS collaborate with the FBI and police agencies to design a Law Enforcement Counter Terrorism Patrol Strategy model consisting of best practices. And this model could be tailored by existing regional training academies and made part -- consideration could be given to making it part of the post requirements that most states have.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Major, for that testimony.

Your final point is actually the point that I wanted to begin my questioning on. You have each described thoughtful and progressive, practical outreach prevention programs to try to counter Islamist terrorist radicalization and, obviously, terrorist acts. The question -- I want to go down and ask you for a short answer at the outset. My first question is, were these programs self-initiated totally, or to any extent were they encouraged by the federal government, particularly the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI?

MR. DOWNING: Well, in local law enforcement we've been in this community policing mode for a long time and moving into this intelligence-led policing mode, so we're used to reaching out and creating partnerships and developing those partnerships. So this just focused the problem on another area. And especially as the counterterrorism expanded from 30 people to 300 people, we had more resources to do it and that became a priority for us. So this was self-initiated.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Self-initiated. Is there any federal funding in the work you're doing?

MR. DOWNING: Not for the outreach.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Got it.

Major Ronczkowski, how about Miami-Dade?

MAJ. RONCZKOWSKI: Self-initiated. It's from the aspect that they were a different part of the community, was a new, emerging component of the community. we took them on just as we take on any other piece of the community. We were aware of what the FBI was doing as far as their outreach, their mosque outreach programs and things that they have, but we also understand they have a fundamentally different mission than we do. We're looking to work within the community. They have a different mission within the community and how they address issues. Our issues start at the ground level and work up; theirs come from the top down sometimes.

As far as federal funding, absolutely not. Completely generally funded.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Okay. And Major Dailey, how about Kansas City?

MAJ. DAILEY: Yes, they're self-initiated. And the funding, the TEW is partially funded through DHS.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Do they have a specific program or is it just you applied and were able to get some funding?

MAJ. DAILEY: It's through our Urban Area Security Initiative Region.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Right.

You made some suggestions at the end -- let me ask generally speaking, Major Dailey, about this. Let me ask the chief and Major Ronczkowski. If you had your druthers, what kind of assistance -- apart from, obviously, some money, but that's okay to ask for to -- what kind of assistance would you hope for from DHS or the FBI?

The point you're making, and I'm making here, too, is that you've self-initiated this because you've seen it as part of your expanded responsibility to maintain public safety post-9/11, but in doing so, as Commissioner Sanchez made clear in his testimony, you're performing a national function. I mean, he's making the point from the perspective of New York City, which is that people are going to be radicalized elsewhere in America but they're going to come to New York to carry out the plans because New York is New York.

So let me ask you what thoughts you have about what we could do to ensure that state and local law enforcement have the direction that you need and the support to be full members of this National Counterterrorism Strategy.

MR. DOWNING: Well, I do think it's crucial to recognize that local law enforcement has been invited to this table and only recently. We're still trying to fine tune and make some adjustments so that the information-sharing environment is truly authentic and that we're truly trusted partners and there's value in that.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: You're not sure you're there yet.

MR. DOWNING: We're not quite there yet. We have great relationships, no doubt, 100 percent better than they were a few years ago, but we still have some low-hanging fruit to pick and we still need to show that the 750,000 law enforcement who are out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week have a different perspective, a different perspective than what federal agencies have, which I know New York is criticized for having their people out in foreign lands, but I think it's a good idea because it gives a local perspective that the federal government does not have here. If they're in Jordan, what is the in intelligence in Jordan telling them about their local community in New York? And that's what's so crucial to us.

So if we had assistance in the area of outreach, this community mapping project I'm hoping could possibly be a pilot project for what the rest of the nation could look like, because if we identify these communities and show where the communities are at risk, we could do a lot of prevention by infusing social services and governmental resources, and also it will help us with our intelligence-led strategy to prevent radicalization and prevent terrorism.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thank you. Thanks, Chief.

Major?

MAJ. RONCZKOWSKI: Well, seeing you said it, I won't be bashful. We could use more funding.

MR. DOWNING: Right.

MAJ. RONCZKOWSKI: We actually have a very good relationship. We're working with major city chiefs, as well as my colleagues here, with a few different initiatives. And they've been working and bringing DHS to the table. It is a relationship that is continuing to grow. I'll tell you, two, three years ago, we had a decent relationship. South Florida is unique. We have had a very good federal relationship.

The FBI supervisor in charge down there has come to the table, full boat, with law enforcement welcomed at every angle. His staff has been meeting with our staff on a regular basis.

The Department of Homeland Security's been helping us with everything from getting us a classification of a secure room facility to obtaining secure systems. As the chief has pointed out, it has to be a trusted partnership. I have a lot of information I'd love to share with them, but if I don't know what it is that they need, and they don't tell me what they need and why they need it, I can't get it to them.

We have an interest overseas. You know, we're just not the local folks that only know about our neighborhoods. We know about other countries. We know other jurisdictions. The reason we do: we have a huge influx of person -- people living within our communities that travel back and forth. They bring us the information. So as they pointed out, we need to know not only what's over there but how it's impacting our communities. The only way we're going to do this is starting down at the bottom. You know, what's being dictated from our communities is based on 20 years -- 25-, 30-year investigators, officers that are on the street. With many of the federal agents, they come down two, three, four years. They're there, they're gone, they move on to another city. We're there for 20, 30 years. We know what's going on, and we need to know what's also going on at other levels. But the partnership has been tremendous.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Good.

My time's up. I'm going to yield to Senator Collins.

I do want to point out that the second phase of 9/11 commission implementing legislation that we adopted a few months ago, signed by the president, does for the first time specifically enable, encourage the Department of Homeland Security to use some of the state Homeland Security grant money and Urban Areas Security Initiatives to fund local law enforcement counterterrorism programs. So hopefully there will be a flow of money beginning in this fiscal year, which of course has already begun, but we have not funded. But that is something you should be asking us questions about, instead of us asking you. (Laughter.)

Senator Collins.

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SEN. LIEBERMAN: She's, you know, that tradition of plain spoken elected officials from Missouri. Senator McCaskill says it like she means it, and she does. I share her admiration for local law enforcement. What you've done here is really quite impressive. I start with the New York folks and Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Kansas City. This was self-initiated. This -- you took this on yourself at the local level because you felt it was now part of your expanded responsibility to provide for the public safety of the people of your local area.

You're carrying out a national function in doing so, and I -- my conclusions from the testimony are pretty direct which is that there is a problem here of homegrown Islamist terrorism. It's increasing. We don't want to overstate it because we want to just emphasize all of us what is the reality -- that the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are law abiding and patriotic and probably fear more than most anybody else the radicalization process going on, particularly as it may involve their children.

But it is a problem. We've got to deal with it and we got to deal with it in exactly the methodical community-based outreach prevention approach that these four great law enforcement agencies are doing, and I'm going to take it on as my responsibility as chairman of this committee working obviously with Senator Collins and the others to push the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to both give those of you who have self-started some more support in doing what you're doing to carry out a national function but also to set a goal that in every community where there's a Muslim American community of any size that there ought to be exactly the kinds of local law enforcement outreach community-based prevention programs that you four are carrying out. So I thank you very much for what you're doing. You really set a national standard and we're going to try to make sure that the rest of the country catches up with you.

The normal proceeding here is that the hearing record stays open for 15 days if any of you want to submit additional testimony and sometimes the senators have additional questions that they will submit to you for answers for the record. But you have the very sincere gratitude of this committee and the people of the communities that you serve. With that I adjourn the hearing.

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