Retirement!

I spent last weekend in an annual reunion of Army buddies, the Council of Colonels. I've written on this group before, and the host made a good point more than once, "We ain't getting any younger." No, we're not, and several members are retired now. And a few asked me when I will join the retired members, and I think that should happen in ten years. Thirty years in the police, twenty-three in the Army. I am looking forward to more time to travel, spend time with family and friends, etc.

I found this article and it's brings up a subject that occasionally comes up, police pensions. Some people do question why cops get pensions after 20-25 years, while most people must wait until their sixty's. The fact is many agencies (like mine) require you to put in more to the pension then I would have put into Social Security. Also, like most "qualified pension plan" participants, I am not in Social Security from my primary job (although I did particulate in my time in the Army Reserves).

But there are other reasons police get pensions sooner than others, and here are a four of them. Comments mine.

4 Reasons Cops Retire Before You
Other

It’s just not fair that cops retire before me

...If I had a nickel for every time someone said how lucky I am to be being able to retire at age 50! I usually respond with a smile and patronize them with “if you say so” or even better ” you’re right, I’m one lucky dog”.

After that I continue the conversation but fall into my own thoughts at the same time.

Initially my brain jumps right to “idiot” or “moron” or “did they really say that or are they just being an a$$#@!e?” This all happens within a matter of seconds. As I walk away, my own self-doubt creeps into the logical side of my brain and wonders.

Am I lucky to retire at such an early age? Do I deserve to retire at an age well before most are allowed to get their gold watch?

These thoughts quickly vanish as I contemplate the absurdity of these questions.

Here are just 4 reasons why cops get to retire “so young.”

Stress

You would think that this one would be a no brainer. There are people out there that think they have stressful jobs.

Unless you are a front line combat grunt, air traffic controller or a skydiving instructor.

Everyone else, please sit down.

“But you don’t know man, I’ve got deadlines and a lot of pressure on me at my job, why do cops retire before I get to?”

And I get that. I really do.

But C’MON man.

I will spare everyone the same ole we face armed felons and don’t know if we are going home at the end of our shift mantra.

It should be blatantly obvious to everyone. Oh and I’m quite sure if you screw up, or have a perceived screw up, at work it won’t cause the city you work in to riot or change your industries culture on a global level.

Just sayin.’

Schedule

It sucks.

I’m not talking about the Mothershippers (Cops who work at Police Headquarters).

I’m talking about Cops. Detectives.

The grunts of police work.

It absolutely kills me when citizens ask, and I’m not making this up, if we are open on Sunday’s. This is why I know that there will always be a fantastically wide disconnect between your average Joe and us.

I have worked days and nights, holidays, birthdays, elections, hurricanes, blizzards, ice storms, and high school football games. I have worked 30 hours without sleep and have come back to work 20 more with only 2 hours of sleep in between.

Oh, and then I go to court on my days off.

Not to mention getting verbal abuse for how we handle a suspect, or eating lunch or taking a break, as well shown in the scene from the show Southland. Fiction, yes, but accurate.

The uniform

I distinctly remember getting into my car and driving to work in full uniform one day. I had been a detective for several years prior to this day and had decided that I wanted to go back to uniform patrol.

I was beginning to doubt my decision with every passing second during my drive in that morning.

I had forgotten how ridiculously uncomfortable it was wearing a bulletproof vest and 30 pounds of police gear. I remember being sore for a week until my body became used to wearing all of it again.

It is nice to see that police departments are now going to outer vests and suspenders. Hopefully this will alleviate all of the back problems that all of us suffer from over decades of wearing the uniform.

My chiropractor would have to agree with this reason why cops retire early.

Knee, hip and back problems, common for patrol.

The exposure to unspeakable suffering

Back in the day (Queue the rookie eye roll) when I was a field training instructor, one the first things I would ask my new guy was if they had ever seen a dead body. Other than their grandma at her funeral, most had not.

There are things in this world that humans are not meant to see.

Or experience.

Bottom line, cops see bad s#!t.

As mentioned from reason #1, law enforcement is a highly stressful and dangerous occupation. New cops arrive in this profession with an eagerness that is almost unrivaled in any other job.

“I’m going to change the world, one arrest at a time”.

Until they see their first dead baby.

The seduction of becoming a cop and serving the greater good enables the rookie patrolman to overlook the inherent dangers and traumatic scenes that he or she may face or see.

As they become fully immersed in the police culture, the old life they had prior to becoming a police officer begins to fade away. The things they experience as a cop forever change them.

A couple of days ago, an old photo of me popped up on my Facebook feed from a group I belong to. In the photo I had been a cop for about three years. Other than looking ridiculously young, I noticed something else.

I had the biggest smile.

And I think this may be the last photo of me smiling this big.

Something I've told many people, a requirement of policing is a detachment, for lack of a better word, to the suffering of others. If you don't have that, you will go nuts and not be able to function. Dealing with dead people, parents who have lost children, children who have been abused. No one should have to endure the...or witness it.

– Bart Proctor has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice and Strategic Intelligence from Liberty University with close to 23 years experience as a police officer and violent crimes detective. He also served as an intelligence officer within his police agency and received extensive training from the FBI and The Department of Homeland Security...

Fights, the Knockout Game and Deadly Force.

A point I made in previous blog debates is it's easy to look at what someone did with 20/20 hindsight, but decisions on deadly force are usually made in an instant. Here is a police cadet getting an education on that.

A loudmouth female police cadet, Trayvon Martin, and the “Knockout Game”

In one of the police academies I attended we watched a video of a police shooting. Two officers in two patrol cars were on a traffic stop and tried to arrest a passenger who had given them a fake name. The passenger started swinging, punched both officers and knocked them to the ground, then ran toward the second patrol car. One of the officers shot him.

Several cadets expressed outrage at the shooting. I had already been a cop for a few years, and had a different view. I argued that the cadets should look at the incident from the officers’ perspective. The officers were making a lawful arrest, they had both been assaulted and beaten badly, and may have thought the suspect was running toward the second patrol car to retrieve a weapon. At that point, a few years into my career, I had already been knocked silly a couple of times, and I knew those officers probably had their bells rung and could have honestly believed they were in life-threatening danger. I didn’t argue that the officers were definitely right, just that the situation may have been more complex than the inexperienced cadets thought.

Emphasis mine. As a reminders, the standard for use of deadly force is reasonable fear for life or serious bodily injury against yourself or a third person. Let's go on.

One female cadet blurted, “Just because you were already a cop, you think that whatever cops do is right!”

I groaned quietly. “No. I’m saying the officers got the crap beat out of them and may have thought the suspect was about to get one of their shotguns and shoot them.” Then I asked, “Have you ever been in a fight?”

“I’ve been in lots of fights!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been in fights at school and at clubs, I know what it’s like to get in a fight. Those cops had no reason to shoot that guy. All he did was hit them.”

The instructor shut our conversation down. I didn’t bring it up again. Until several months later, after the female cadet learned a hard lesson.

Toward the end of the academy we went through a very difficult training exercise. We had to run around the academy building, run up and down stairs several times, drag a dummy and a few other things, then get into a ring and fight an instructor for several minutes. The instructor was all padded up, and all we had was a soft foam baton and fake pistol. Most of the cadets got into the ring totally worn out, then got worked over by the instructor.

I was standing outside the ring when the female cadet went through. The instructor she faced was a very strong, female workout fanatic. The cadet ran into the ring panting and sweating, faced the instructor and yelled, “You’re under arrest! Turn around and put your hands behind your back!”

Without a word, the instructor threw a blindingly fast punch and nailed the cadet right between the eyes.

The cadet slammed onto her back. Her eyes were wide open and staring straight up, her mouth hanging slack. She was totally dazed from the blow. You could almost see the birds and stars swirling around her head.

Everyone screamed at her to get up. She eventually did, and did her best to put up a defense. But the fight was pretty much over after the first hit.

After the exercise, I casually said to the cadet, “So, I thought you had been in a lot of fights.”

She answered, “Yeah, but not like that! I was in girl fights. All we did was scratch each other and pull hair. That instructor hit me like a man.”

As I said, she learned an important lesson that day. If that instructor hadn’t knocked the crap out of her, she might have hit the street not knowing that one punch can completely disable someone. The cadet went on to become a very good officer.

During the uproar over the Trayvon Martin court case, I heard a lot of intelligent, educated people comment that “All Trayvon did was hit Zimmerman. That’s no reason to shoot someone.” And I saw in them the same ignorance of reality that the instructor had beaten out of the female cadet.

The people who made those comments have probably never been in a real fight. But, like the cadet, they think they have. They maybe had a few schoolyard scuffles, where neither side was trying to kill the other. They threw a few punches and kicks, without intending to really hurt their opponent, and their opponent landed a few blows without really hurting them. Worst case, someone got a bloody nose, or split lip. Maybe these people only watched others fight, and were never in one themselves.

But no matter. Even though their mental concept of a fight is two five year olds slapping each other under the monkey bars, they still believe their narrow experience with “fighting” makes them qualified to dictate when we’re allowed to use a gun to defend ourselves from someone who’s “only” throwing punches. They don’t seem to notice that no UFC or MMA fighters, people with real, actual fighting experience, are proclaiming “Your life can’t be in danger from being punched.”

Well, here’s some reality for those who think it’s always wrong to shoot an unarmed person, or who can’t fathom how George Zimmerman could have possibly been justified in shooting Trayvon Martin.

Last year an El Paso, Texas police officer was beaten to death by an unarmed 17 year old. The teenager punched the officer, knocked him backward onto the concrete, then straddled him and beat him severely. The officer never regained consciousness and died nine days later. He was a 29 year old Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few days ago an off-duty NYPD officer was knocked out with one punch. His attacker then repeatedly punched and kicked him while he was unconscious and helpless, and also slammed the back of his head into the concrete. The officer is currently in a medically-induced coma.

He goes on to discuss the Martin-Zimmerman case in more detail, but the point is made. When reviewing what a cop (or a homeowner for that matter) does in a spilt decision to use a weapon against someone, the viewpoint must be the from that person. Not from a third person sitting in an office with a cop of coffee, but of the man or woman in an alley who's just been punched multiple times, is about to loose consciousness and has to decide in a fraction of a second to shoot or not shoot.

Great article Mr. Hernandez.

Surveillance

Security expert Fred Burton discusses methods and complexities of surveillance — an issue that has come into focus amid a probe of possible intelligence failures in the recent Times Square bombing attempt.

Source: www.stratfor.com

Security at large scale events

Analyst Fred Burton explains security for athletes and fans at large-scale sporting events ahead of the World Cup in South Africa.

Source: www.stratfor.com

Use of force in arrest and other things...

I remember one thing a field trainer taught me...whatever happens, you go home!

Lessons Learned: The Power of History
with Andy Casavant
05/24/2010

Totality of the circumstances: In the eye of the beholder

In a recent baton training class, I was amazed at the looks and lack of response I got when the group was asked if they could use a distracter technique such as a shin kick or a backhand or some other techniques against a resistive subject who was only verbally resisting. They looked at each other and no one would reply. I then asked if they could draw the baton at this stage and again no one wanted to answer.

I go on to explain that according to Florida Statutes, ANY force can be used to affect an arrest. I’ve always said that all force is necessary but is all force used reasonable? That’s the issue with use of force cases. Trying to determine if the force was reasonable.

What is meant by ‘reasonable?’ Is it simply saying that this is the way another officer or group of officers would act under the same criteria? Maybe not. I suspect — and in fact, I know firsthand — that officers in certain jurisdictions could reasonably draw their guns on traffic stops as a matter of course, while to do that in other locations would get a beef filed on you. What is reasonable in Chicago, or L.A. may not be (and often times is not) reasonable in most other places.

However, there is a way to determine reasonable that is universally accepted both outside and inside our profession. This test is based upon the four tiers of protection that all officers are required to work within. These are the United States Constitution, the State Statutes, agency policy and training. If you step outside these areas, your actions will most likely be deemed unreasonable. For example, when are you allowed to violate someone’s rights under the 4th Amendment? The answer is, “Never!” While there are exceptions to search and seizure laws, these do not allow you to violate a person’s rights under that Amendment. In fact, the law protects citizens from unreasonable search/seizure.

It is well known that State Statutes usually are more restrictive than the Federal ones, and that agency policy is usually more restrictive than both. Training reflects the application of all three provided through various means to those that have to work the streets. All of these must intertwine and no one area can stand alone. In other words, training must reflect the proper behaviors and knowledge related to the U.S. Constitution, State Statutes, and agency policy. To do otherwise would be unreasonable.

Comprehensive understanding of what can be done related to use of force is far more important than what can’t be done. If an officer is going to carry a baton, then they must know how, when, and where to use it. If all they know is what they can’t do, then I believe we’ve failed them as trainers. It’s relatively easy to figure out when and why to use firearms. Not so with batons (and DT in general). There are many reasons for this. I think that officers in general are not really taught these issues as much as they are taught techniques. The application of those techniques requires many variables especially at the lower ends of the force levels.

I also think that other issues cloud the use of batons and DT techniques such as the rise in use of TASER® electronic control devices (ECDs), carrying of the baton, the techniques themselves which, with the baton is basically to strike/hit someone. There is also some doubt that arises with the use of batons as there really is no training that replicates its use in a training environment. We can pepper spray and apply ECDs to each other to get the desired effect, however, we can’t hit someone the way they need to be hit with a baton in a training environment, so we really don’t know how hard and what is the real response of someone to a strike.

To understand the effectiveness of the baton, for example, means that we must understand when it is ineffective. Its advantage is that it is the only weapon in the police inventory that has the capability of transcending the entire length of the use of force spectrum. Its presence alone can stop aggressive behavior, it certainly fits into the intermediate class of weapons and if applied to certain areas can be used as deadly force if needed. No other weapon has that capability in my opinion.

So, as trainers and users of any and all police weapons, we need to understand that weapon in the totality of the circumstances when it is used. This term used in the Supreme Courts decision of Grahm V. Conner spells this out.

The recent Streamwood, Illinois video cam of the officer using various forms of force (including firearm, then ECDs, and then baton) certainly points this out. The public’s perception with the use of firearms and now with ECDs has somewhat solidified over the past years. Just like us, they kind of know what is going to happen if we shoot or deploy an ECD at someone and the public has come to accept this. What they do not see, because we do not use them vary often is the baton or in some cases various types of DT techniques.

That is why when one views a police officer using a baton which is essentially to hit someone to gain control, it often times looks more brutal that it is and since most officers are not sure if they can use it at the lower levels of force, guess what the public believes!! What the video and any camera will never show is the totality of the circumstances especially with the baton. The officer needs to only be able to justify his/her actions as it relates to that incident. The reasonableness of the use of any police weapon has nothing to do with the actual techniques being used but rather was the weapon used reasonable within the totality of the circumstances? All the officer-subject factors need to be taken into account and again, it’s not what a reasonable officer would do but was the actions of the officer covered by the Constitution, State laws, policy, and training?

I believe that we will be facing many more such challenges — it’s simply the nature of the society we live in. That’s why it is incumbent upon every officer to know what they can do (and when), and then be able to clearly articulate their actions based upon reasonableness within the context of the totality of the circumstances.


About the author

Andrew J. Casavant is currently the Training Coordinator/SRT Commander for the Walton County Sheriff’s Office and an adjunct professor at Northwest Florida State College. Prior to this he was the Bureau Chief for all Advanced/Specialized Training in Iraq while assigned to DOJ’s ICITAP program. He retired as a Lt. Colonel US Army Military Police Reserves. Andy has a Masters of Science Degree in Technology, Training/Development from Eastern Illinois University. He also served as the Chairman of the Board for ASLET and was a member of the Board of Directors for IALEFI.

Andy currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at Okaloosa/Walton College and was the recipient of the Silver Star for Bravery, Police Hall of Fame

Come on, Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon said that's what he did

Leave it to the New York Assembly to make things worse....

I wonder if those idiots think we're a combo of John Wayne, Mel Gibson and Jackie Chan...it's nice to think about and criticize what a cop did...while your sitting on your ass and enjoying yourself and not scared as hell you ain't gonna live.

If it passes, hopefully the governor can see how stupid this is....pun not intended.

PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie
So-called 'no-kill' bill surfaces in NY

Ill-advised piece of legislation was drafted in the aftermath of the death of Sean Bell outside a Queens, New York strip club in November 2006

Lawmakers in New York are again contemplating the notion of “shoot-to-wound” legislation and cops in that state are understandably furious. The so-called ‘minimum force’ bill was drafted in the aftermath the death of Sean Bell outside a Queens, New York strip club on November 25, 2006. Similar legislation has been previously presented, and defeated, but the fact that it’s come around again indicates a particularly slow learning curve among law makers about what law enforcers actually do.

According to a newspaper report by Murray Weiss of the New York Post, the bill would “amend the state penal codes’ ‘justification’ clause that allows an officer the right to kill a thug if he feels his life or someone else's is in imminent danger.”

Weiss writes that the bill proposed bill “would force officers to use their weapons ‘with the intent to stop, rather than kill’ a suspect” and would mandate that cops ‘shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg’ as opposed to the present practice of aiming center-mass until the threat is stopped.

Here’s just one problem with this ill-advised piece of legislation: cops already shoot to stop — not kill — the threat.

Sure, there’s the one-in-a-million instance — usually when a hostile suspect is holding a hostage at gunpoint with imminent danger of death to said hostage — in which an immediate de-animation shot is required. But there are many, many more instances in which an officer — or multiple officers — have put rounds on a dangerous suspect, stopped them from being a threat, and then instantaneously rendered life-saving aid.

PoliceOne has obtained the advance draft of an upcoming position paper from our partners at Force Science Research Center, which counters — with ease and aplomb — the sideways thinking in this type of legislation. Check out that important paper here.

“When I encounter civilian response to officer-involved shootings, it’s very often ‘Why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg?’” Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute, told Force Science News in a 2006 interview centered on Paterson’s proposed legislation. “When civilians judge police shooting deaths–on juries, on review boards, in the media, in the community–this same argument is often brought forward. Shooting to wound is naively regarded as a reasonable means of stopping dangerous behavior.

“In reality, this thinking is a result of ‘training by Hollywood,’ in which movie and TV cops are able to do anything to control the outcomes of events that serve the director’s dramatic interests. It reflects a misconception of real-life dynamics and ends up imposing unrealistic expectations of skill on real-life officers.”

Vice President Joe Biden apparently agrees, according to the FSRC report. “When Michael Paladino, president of New York’s Detectives Endowment Association, showed him the bill he reportedly scoffed and suggested that it be called the ‘John Wayne Bill’ because of the unrealistic, movie-like sharpshooting skills it demands of officers,” reads the Force Science paper.

PoliceOne Firearms Columnist Ron Avery is quoted in the Force Science Research document as saying that shooting to wound “reflects a misapplication of police equipment. Less-lethal options should be attempted only with tools designed for that purpose.”

Avery says further that if you “deliberately use deadly force to bring people into custody without incapacitating them, you’re using the wrong tool for that job. Also, if you shoot them in the arm or leg and you destroy muscle tissue, shatter bone or destroy nerve function you have maimed that person for life. Now attorneys can play the argument of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and pursue punitive damages for destroying the capacity of your ‘victim’ to earn wages and so on. You don’t try to just wound people with a gun. Period.”

This legislation — and other such nonsense like it — was almost certainly drafted by a group of people who have never in their lives operated a firearm, much less done so in the life-or-death context that police officers face every day they pin on the badge. Avery has an idea on how we can help those folks get an idea. “Put them in a cage with a lion,” Avery suggests. “Then let’s see if they shoot to wound.”

About the author

Doug Wyllie is editor of PoliceOne, responsible for setting the editorial direction of the website and managing the planned editorial features by our roster of expert writers. In addition to his editorial and managerial responsibilities, Doug has authored more than 150 articles and tactical tips on a wide range of topics and trends that affect the law enforcement community. On a daily basis, Doug is in close personal contact with some of the top subject-matter experts in law enforcement, regularly tapping into the world-class knowledge of officers and trainers from around the United States, and working to help spread that information and insight to the hundreds of thousands of officers who visit PoliceOne every month. Even in his “spare” time, Doug is active in his support for the law enforcement community, contributing his time and talents toward police-related charitable events as well as participating in force-on-force training, search-and-rescue training, and other scenario-based training designed to prepare cops for the fight they face every day on the street.

Many of you have seen the video of how fast a man with a knife can get to an officer before he draws and fires his weapon....I wonder if these idiots in Assembly Land have every had someone come at them with a weapon....if this actually gets to the committee and floor, I hope they get shown that video so they get some idea of reality put in their skulls.

Hopefully it never comes to the floor...

PS: They are doing a Lethal Weapon 5...

Training, Fighting and Terrorism

The latest from STRATFOR:

From Failed Bombings to Armed Jihadist Assaults
May 27, 2010 | 0855 GMT

By Scott Stewart

One of the things we like to do in our Global Security and Intelligence Report from time to time is examine the convergence of a number of separate and unrelated developments and then analyze that convergence and craft a forecast. In recent months we have seen such a convergence occur.

The most recent development is the interview with the American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that was released to jihadist Internet chat rooms May 23 by al-Malahim Media, the public relations arm of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In the interview, al-Awlaki encouraged strikes against American civilians. He also has been tied to Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was charged in the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the failed Christmas Day 2009 airline bombing. And al-Awlaki reportedly helped inspire Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested in connection with the attempted Times Square attack in May.

The second link in our chain is the failed Christmas Day and Times Square bombings themselves. They are the latest in a long string of failed or foiled bombing attacks directed against the United States that date back to before the 9/11 attacks and include the thwarted 1997 suicide bomb plot against a subway in New York, the thwarted December 1999 Millennium Bomb plot and numerous post-9/11 attacks such as Richard Reid’s December 2001 shoe-bomb attempt, the August 2004 plot to bomb the New York subway system and the May 2009 plot to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft. Indeed, jihadists have not conducted a successful bombing attack inside the United States since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Getting a trained bombmaker into the United States has proved to be increasingly difficult for jihadist groups, and training a novice to make bombs has also been problematic as seen in the Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi cases.

The final link we’d like to consider are the calls in the past few months for jihadists to conduct simple attacks with readily available items. This call was first made by AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi in October 2009 and then echoed by al Qaeda prime spokesman Adam Gadahn in March of 2010. In the Times Square case, Shahzad did use readily available items, but he lacked the ability to effectively fashion them into a viable explosive device.

When we look at all these links together, there is a very high probability that jihadists linked to, or inspired by, AQAP and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — and perhaps even al Shabaab — will attempt to conduct simple attacks with firearms in the near future.


Threats and Motives

In the May 23 al-Malahim interview (his first with AQAP), al-Awlaki not only said he was proud of the actions of Hasan and Abdulmutallab, whom he referred to as his students, but also encouraged other Muslims to follow the examples they set by their actions. When asked about the religious permissibility of an operation like Abdulmutallab’s, which could have killed innocent civilians, al-Awlaki told the interviewer that the term “civilian” was not really applicable to Islamic jurisprudence and that he preferred to use the terms combatants and non-combatants. He then continued by noting that “non-combatants are people who do not take part in the war” but that, in his opinion, “the American people in its entirety takes part in the war, because they elected this administration, and they finance this war.” In his final assessment, al-Awlaki said, “If the heroic mujahid brother Umar Farouk could have targeted hundreds of soldiers, that would have been wonderful. But we are talking about the realities of war,” meaning that in his final analysis, attacks against civilians were permissible under Islamic law. Indeed, he later noted, “Our unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the plane are a drop in the ocean.”

While this line of logic is nearly identical to that historically put forth by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the very significant difference is that al-Awlaki is a widely acknowledged Islamic scholar. He speaks with a religious authority that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri simply do not possess.

On May 2, the TTP released a video statement by Hakeemullah Mehsud in which Mehsud claimed credit for the failed Times Square attack. In the recording, which reportedly was taped in early April, Mehsud said that the time was approaching “when our fedayeen [suicide operatives] will attack the American states in their major cities.” He also said, “Our fedayeen have penetrated the terrorist America. We will give extremely painful blows to the fanatic America.”

While TTP leaders seem wont to brag and exaggerate (e.g., Baitullah Mehsud falsely claimed credit for the April 3, 2009, shooting at an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y., which was actually committed by a mentally disturbed Vietnamese immigrant), there is ample reason to believe the claims made by the TTP regarding their contact with Shahzad. We can also deduce with some certainty that Mehsud and company have trained other men who have traveled (or returned) to the United States following that training. The same is likely true for AQAP, al Shabaab and other jihadist groups. In fact, the FBI is likely monitoring many such individuals inside the United States at this very moment — and in all likelihood is madly scrambling to find and investigate many others.

Fight Like You Train

There is an old military and law-enforcement training axiom that states, “You will fight like you train.” This concept has led to the development of training programs designed to help soldiers and agents not only learn skills but also practice and reinforce those skills until they become second nature. This way, when the student graduates and comes under incredible pressure in the real world — like during an armed ambush — their training will take over and they will react even before their mind can catch up to the rapidly unfolding situation. The behaviors needed to survive have been ingrained into them. This concept has been a problem for the jihadists when it comes to terrorist attacks.

It is important to understand that most of the thousands of men who attend training camps set up by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups are taught the basic military skills required to fight in an insurgency. This means they are provided basic physical training to help condition them, given some hand-to-hand combat training and then taught how to operate basic military hardware like assault rifles, hand grenades and, in some cases, crew-served weapons like machine guns and mortars. Only a very few students are then selected to attend the more advanced training that will teach them the skills required to become a trained terrorist operative.

In many ways, this process parallels the way that special operations forces operators are selected from the larger military population and then sent on for extensive training to transform them into elite warriors. Many people wash out during this type of intense training and only a few will make it all the way through to graduation. The problem for the jihadists is finding someone with the time and will to undergo the intensive training required to become a terrorist operative, the ability to complete the training and — critically — the ability to travel abroad to conduct terrorist attacks against the far enemy. Clearly the jihadist groups are able to train men to fight as insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have shown the ability to train terrorist operatives who can operate in the fairly permissive environments of places like the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. They also have some excellent bombmakers and terrorist planners in Iraq and Pakistan.

What the jihadists seem to be having a problem doing is finding people who can master the terrorist tradecraft and who have the ability to travel into hostile areas to ply their craft. There seems to be a clear division between the men who can travel and the men who can master the advanced training. The physical and intelligence onslaught launched against al Qaeda and other jihadist groups following the 9/11 attacks has also created operational security concerns that complicate the ability to find and train effective terrorist operatives.

Of course, we’re not telling the jihadists anything they don’t already know. This phenomenon is exactly why you have major jihadist figures like al-Wahayshi and Gadahn telling the operatives who can travel to or are already in the West to stop trying to conduct attacks that are beyond their capabilities. Gadahn and al-Awlaki have heaped praise on Maj. Hasan as an example to follow — and this brings us back to armed assaults.

In the United States it is very easy to obtain firearms and it is legal to go to a range or private property to train with them. Armed assaults are also clearly within the skill set of jihadists who have made it only through basic insurgent training. As we’ve mentioned several times in the past, these grassroots individuals are far more likely to strike the United States and Europe than professional terrorist operatives dispatched from the al Qaeda core group. Such attacks will also allow these grassroots operatives to fight like they have been trained. When you combine all these elements with the fact that the United States is an open society with a lot of very vulnerable soft targets, it is not difficult to forecast that we will see more armed jihadist assaults in the United States in the near future.


Armed Assaults

Armed assaults employing small arms are not a new concept in terrorism by any means. They have proved to be a tried-and-true tactic since the beginning of the modern era of terrorism and have been employed in many famous attacks conducted by a variety of actors. A few examples are the Black September operation against the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics; the December 1975 seizure of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters in Vienna, led by Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka “Carlos the Jackal”; the December 1985 simultaneous attacks against the airports in Rome and Vienna by the Abu Nidal Organization; and the September 2004 school seizure in Beslan, North Ossetia, by Chechen militants. More recently, the November 2008 armed assault in Mumbai demonstrated how deadly and spectacular such attacks can be.

In some instances — such as the December 1996 seizure of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, Peru, by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement — the objective of the armed assault is to take and intentionally hold hostages for a long period of time. In other instances, such as the May 1972 assault on Lod Airport by members of the Japanese Red Army, the armed assault is planned as a suicide attack designed simply to kill as many people as possible before the assailants themselves are killed or incapacitated. Often attacks fall somewhere in the middle. For example, even though Mumbai became a protracted operation, its planning and execution indicated it was intended as an attack in which the attackers would inflict maximum damage and not be taken alive. It was only due to the good fortune of the attackers and the ineptitude of the Indian security forces that the operation lasted as long as it did.

We discussed above the long string of failed and foiled bombing attacks directed against the United States. During that same time, there have been several armed assaults that have killed people, such as the attack against the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles International Airport by Hesham Mohamed Hadayet in July 2002, the shooting attacks by John Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo in the Washington area in September and October 2002 and the June 2009 attack in which Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad allegedly shot and killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting center. The most successful of these attacks was the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which resulted in 13 deaths. These attacks not only resulted in deaths but also received extensive media coverage.

Armed assaults are effective and they can kill people. However, as we have noted before, due to the proficiency of U.S. police agencies and the training their officers have received in active shooter scenarios following school shootings and incidents of workplace violence, the impact of armed assaults will be mitigated in the United States, and Europe as well. In fact, it was an ordinary police officer responding to the scene and instituting an active shooter protocol who shot and wounded Maj. Hasan and brought an end to his attack in the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood. The number of people in the American public who are armed can also serve as a mitigating factor, though many past attacks have been planned at locations where personal weapons are prohibited, like the Los Angeles International Airport, Fort Hood and Fort Dix.

Of course, a Mumbai-like situation involving multiple trained shooters who can operate like a fire team will cause problems for first responders, but the police communication system in the United States and the availability of trained SWAT teams will allow authorities to quickly vector in sufficient resources to handle the threat in most locations — especially where such large coordinated attacks are most likely to happen, such as New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Therefore, even a major assault in the United States is unlikely to drag out for days as did the incident in Mumbai.

None of this is to say that the threats posed by suicide bombers against mass transit and aircraft will abruptly end. The jihadists have proven repeatedly that they have a fixation on both of these target sets and they will undoubtedly continue their attempts to attack them. Large bombings and airline attacks also carry with them a sense of drama that a shooting does not — especially in a country that has become somewhat accustomed to shooting incidents conducted by non-terrorist actors for other reasons. However, we believe we’re seeing a significant shift in the mindset of jihadist ideologues and that this shift will translate into a growing trend toward armed assaults.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

Officer Down

Police Officer Thomas E. Wortham IV
Chicago Police Department
End of Watch: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Age: 30
Tour of Duty: 2 years, 11 months
Badge Number: 6181
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Suspect Info: Shot and killed

Officer Thomas Wortham was shot and killed after identifying himself as a police officer when four suspects attempted to rob him while he was off duty at 11:25 pm.

Officer Wortham was visiting his parent's home to show pictures from the previous week's Police Week activities that he attended in Washington, DC. As he was leaving, four men approached and attempted to rob him of his motorcycle. Officer Wortham drew his service weapon and fired at the suspects, but was fatally shot.

His father, a retired Chicago police sergeant, witnessed the shooting from his window. He exited the house, exchanging shots with the suspects, killing one and seriously wounding another. The remaining two suspects fled in a vehicle, but were taken into custody the following day.

Officer Wortham had served with the Chicago Police Department for nearly three years and was assigned to the Englewood District. He had recently returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq while serving with the Wisconsin Army National Guard.


Rest in Peace Bro…We’ll Continue The Watch
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Officer Down

Sergeant Brandon Paudert
West Memphis Police Department Arkansas
End of Watch: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Age: 39
Tour of Duty: 7 years
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Suspect Info: Shot and killed





Police Officer Bill Evans
West Memphis Police Department Arkansas
End of Watch: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Tour of Duty: 9 years
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Suspect Info: Shot and killed

Sergeant Brandon Paudert and Police Officer Bill Evans were shot and killed during a vehicle stop.

Officer Evans was on patrol on Interstate-40 when, at 1136 hours, he pulled over a vehicle, occupied by two men, for a violation. Sergeant Paudert arrived shortly after to provide back-up on the stop. During the stop, the officers had the vehicle occupants exit the vehicle. A struggle with one suspect ensued, followed by an exchange of gunfire; one suspect armed with a handgun, and the second with a long rifle. Officer Evans and Sergeant Paudert were both fatally wounded in an exchange of gunfire.

The suspect fled, and were later located at a nearby store. They were shot and killed in a shootout with members of the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office, in which the County Sheriff and the Chief of Patrol were seriously wounded.

Sergeant Paudert was a seven year veteran of the department and a member of the Drug Interdiction Unit. He was the son of the West Memphis Chief of Police. He is survived by his three children.

Officer Evans was a nine year veteran of the department and a member of the Drug Interdiction Unit. He was the nephew of the West Memphis Chief of Police. He is survived by his two children.

Rest in Peace Gentlemen...We'll Continue the Watch.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Kidnappings and Intelligence

A Look at Kidnapping through the Lens of Protective Intelligence
May 20, 2010

By Scott Stewart

Looking at the world from a protective-intelligence perspective, the theme for the past week has not been improvised explosive devices or potential mass-casualty attacks. While there have been suicide bombings in Afghanistan, alleged threats to the World Cup and seemingly endless post-mortem discussions of the failed May 1 Times Square attack, one recurring and under-reported theme in a number of regions around the world has been kidnapping.

For example, in Heidenheim, Germany, Maria Boegerl, the wife of German banker Thomas Boegerl, was reportedly kidnapped from her home May 12. The kidnappers issued a ransom demand to the family and an amount was agreed upon. Mr. Boegerl placed the ransom payment at the arranged location, but the kidnappers never picked up the money (perhaps suspecting or detecting police involvement). The family has lost contact with the kidnappers, and fear for Mrs. Boegerl’s fate has caused German authorities to launch a massive search operation, which has included hundreds of searchers along with dogs, helicopters and divers.

Two days after the Boegerl kidnapping, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) posted a message on the Internet claiming to have custody of French citizen Michel Germaneau, a retired engineer who had previously worked in Algeria’s petroleum sector. Germaneau was reportedly kidnapped April 22, in northern Niger, close to the border with Mali and Algeria. The AQIM video contained a photo of Germaneau and of his identification card. The group demanded a prisoner exchange and said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy would be responsible for the captive’s well-being.
Also on May 14, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a high-profile attorney and former presidential candidate, was kidnapped near his ranch in the Mexican state of Queretaro. Fernandez had left his home in Mexico City to drive to his ranch but never arrived. His vehicle was found abandoned near the ranch on Saturday morning and the vehicle reportedly showed signs of a struggle. It is not known who kidnapped Fernandez or what the motivation for the kidnapping was.

At the moment a kidnapping occurs, the abduction team usually has achieved tactical surprise and usually employs overwhelming force. To the previously unsuspecting victim, the abductors seemingly appear out of nowhere. But when examined carefully, kidnappings are, for the most part, the result of a long and carefully orchestrated process. They do not arise from a vacuum. There are almost always some indications or warnings that the process is in motion prior to the actual abduction, meaning that many kidnappings are avoidable. In light of this reality, let’s take a more detailed look at the phenomenon of kidnappings.

Types of Kidnappings

There are many different types of kidnappings. Although kidnappings for ransom and political kidnappings generate considerable news interest, most kidnappings have nothing to do with money or political statements. They are typically kidnappings conducted by family members in custody disputes, emotionally disturbed strangers wanting to take a child to raise or strangers who abduct a victim for sexual exploitation.

Even in financially motivated kidnappings, there are a number of different types. The stereotypical kidnapping of a high-value target comes most readily to mind, but there are also more spur-of-the-moment express kidnappings, where a person is held until his bank account can be drained using an ATM card, and even virtual kidnappings, where no kidnapping occurs at all but the victim is frightened by a claim that a loved one has been kidnapped and pays a ransom to the alleged abductors. Some of the piracy incidents in Somalia also move into the economic kidnapping realm, especially in cases where the crew or passengers are seen as being more valuable than the boat or its cargo.

Since kidnapping is such a broad topic, for the sake of this discussion, we will focus primarily on kidnappings that are financially motivated and those that are politically motivated. Financially motivated kidnappings can be conducted by a variety of criminal elements. At the highest level are highly trained professional kidnapping gangs that specialize in abducting high-net-worth individuals and who will frequently demand ransoms in the millions of dollars. Such groups often employ teams of specialists who carry out a variety of specific tasks such as collecting intelligence, conducting surveillance, snatching the target, negotiating with the victim’s family and establishing and guarding the safe-houses.

At the other end of the spectrum are gangs that randomly kidnap targets of opportunity. These gangs are generally far less skilled than the professional gangs and often will hold a victim for only a short time, as in an express kidnapping. Sometimes express kidnapping victims are held in the trunk of a car for the duration of their ordeal, which can sometimes last for days if the victim has a large amount in a checking account and a small daily ATM withdrawal limit. Other times, if an express kidnapping gang discovers it has grabbed a high-value target by accident, the gang will hold the victim longer and demand a much higher ransom. Occasionally, these express kidnapping groups will even “sell” a high-value victim to a more professional kidnapping gang. (On a side note, most express kidnapping victims tend to be male and are most frequently abducted while walking on the street after dark, and many have impaired their senses by consuming alcohol.)

In the United States, it is far more common for a relatively poor person to be kidnapped for financial motives than it is for a high-net-worth individual. This is because kidnapping groups frequently target groups of illegal immigrants, who they believe are far less likely to seek help from the authorities. In some cases, the police have found dozens of immigrant hostages being held in safe-houses.

Between the two extremes of kidnapping groups — those targeting the rich and those targeting the poor — there is a wide range of kidnapping gangs that might target a bank vice president or branch manager rather than the bank’s CEO, or that might kidnap the owner of a restaurant or other small business rather than an industrialist.

In the realm of political kidnappings, there are abductions that are very well-planned, such as the December 1981 kidnapping of Gen. James Dozier by the Italian Red Brigades, or Hezbollah’s March 1985 kidnapping of journalist Terry Anderson. However, there are also opportunistic cases of politically motivated kidnappings, such as when foreigners are abducted at a Taliban checkpoint in Afghanistan or AQIM militants grab a European tourist in the Sahel area of Africa. Of course, in the case of both the Taliban and AQIM, the groups see kidnapping as an important source of funding as well as a politically useful tool.

Understanding the Process

In deliberate (as opposed to opportunistic) kidnappings based on financial or political motives, the kidnappers generally follow a process that is very similar to what we call the terrorist attack cycle: target selection, planning, deployment, attack, escape and exploitation. In a kidnapping, this means the group must identify a victim; plan for the abduction, captivity and negotiation; conduct the abduction and secure the hostage; successfully leverage the life of the victim for financial or political gain; and then escape.

During some phases of this process, the kidnappers may not be visible to the target, but there are several points during the process when the kidnappers are forced to expose themselves to detection in order to accomplish their mission. Like the perpetrators of a terrorist attack, those planning a kidnapping are most vulnerable to detection while they are conducting surveillance — before they are ready to deploy and conduct their attack. As we have noted several times in past analyses, one of the secrets of countersurveillance is that most criminals are not very good at conducting surveillance. The primary reason they succeed is that no one is looking for them.

Of course, kidnappers are also very easy to spot once they launch their attack, pull their weapons and perhaps even begin to shoot. By this time, however, it might very well be too late to escape their attack. They will have selected their attack site and employed the forces they believe they need to overpower their victim and complete the operation. While the kidnappers could botch their operation and the target could escape unscathed, it is simply not practical to pin one’s hopes on that possibility. It is clearly better to spot the kidnappers early and avoid their trap before it is sprung and the guns come out.

Kidnappers, like other criminals, look for patterns and vulnerabilities that they can exploit. Their chances for success increase greatly if they are allowed to conduct surveillance at will and are given the opportunity to thoroughly assess the security measures (if any) employed by the target. We have seen several cases in Mexico in which the criminals even chose to attack despite security measures such as armored cars and armed security guards. In such cases, criminals attack with adequate resources to overcome existing security. For example, if there are protective agents, the attackers will plan to neutralize them first. If there is an armored vehicle, they will find ways to defeat the armor or grab the target when he or she is outside the vehicle. Because of this, criminals must not be allowed to conduct surveillance at will. Potential targets should practice a heightened but relaxed state of situational awareness that will help them spot hostile surveillance.

Potential targets should also conduct simple pattern and route analyses to determine where they are most predictable and vulnerable. Taking an objective look at your schedule and routes is really not as complicated as it may seem. While the ideal is to vary routes and times to avoid predictable locations, this is also difficult and disruptive and warranted only when the threat is extremely high. A more practical alternative is for potential targets to raise their situational awareness a notch as they travel through such areas at predictable times.
Of course, using the term “potential targets” points to another problem. Many kidnapping victims simply don’t believe they are potential targets until after they have been kidnapped, and therefore do not take commonsense security measures. Frequently, when such people are debriefed after their release from captivity, they are able to recall suspicious activity before their abduction that they did not take seriously because they did not consider themselves targets. One American businessman who was kidnapped in Central America said upon his release that he knew there was something odd about the behavior of a particular couple he saw frequently sitting on a park bench near his home prior to his kidnapping, but he didn’t think he was rich enough to be targeted for kidnapping. As soon as he was abducted, he said that he immediately knew that the awkward couple had been observing him to determine his pattern. He said that he often thought about that couple during his two months in captivity, and how a little bit of curiosity could have saved him from a terrifying ordeal and his family a substantial sum of money.

The same steps involved in a deliberate kidnapping are also followed in ad hoc, opportunistic kidnappings — though the steps may be condensed and accomplished in seconds or minutes rather than the weeks or months normally associated with a well-planned kidnapping operation. And the same problems with lack of awareness often apply. It is not uncommon to talk to someone who was involved in an express kidnapping and hear the person say, “I got a bad feeling about those three guys standing near that car when I started walking down that block, but I kept walking anyway.” This frequent occurrence highlights the importance of situational awareness, attack recognition and proper mindset maintenance.

Potential targets do not have to institute security measures that will make them invulnerable to such crimes — something that is very difficult and that can be very expensive. Rather, the objective is to take measures that make them a harder target than other members of the specific class of individuals to which they belong. Groups conducting pre-operational surveillance, whether for an intentional kidnapping or an opportunistic kidnapping, prefer a target that is unaware and easy prey. Taking some basic security measures such as maintaining a healthy state of situational awareness will, in many cases, cause the criminals to choose another target who is less aware and therefore more vulnerable.

Also, most people who are kidnapped in places like Afghanistan or the Sahel know they are going into dangerous places and disregard the warnings not to go to those places. Many of these people, like journalists and aid workers, take the risk as part of their jobs. Others, like the European tourists abducted in the Sahel (and some of the pleasure boaters kidnapped by Somali pirates), appear to naively disregard the risk or to be thrill-seekers. In the recent Germaneau case in Niger, due to the number of highly publicized kidnappings in the Sahel region over the past eight years, and Germaneau’s personal history of working in Algeria, it would be hard to argue that he did not know what he could be getting himself into (though we are unsure at this point what motivated him to run that risk). After Germaneau’s kidnapping, his driver was subsequently arrested, raising the possibility that he was somehow complicit in the abduction. This is a reminder that it is not at all unusual for kidnapping gangs to have inside help, whether a maid, bodyguard, interpreter or taxi driver.

In retrospect, almost every person who is kidnapped either missed or ignored some indication or warning of danger. These warnings can range from observable criminal behavior to a consular information bulletin specifically warning people not to drive outside of cities in Guatemala after dark, for example. This means that, while kidnapping can be a devastating crime, it can also be an avoidable one.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

Officer Down

Police Officer Eydelmen Mani
Houston Police Department
End of Watch: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Age: 30
Tour of Duty: 7 years
Cause of Death: Automobile accident
Date of Incident: Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Officer Eydelmen Mani was killed in an automobile accident while responding to a call at approximately 11:30 pm. He was traveling on the North Freeway access road, near Troy Road, when his patrol car struck a guardrail and overturned.

Rescue crews extricated him from the vehicle and transported him to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries a short time later.

Officer Mani had served with the Houston Police Department for seven years. He is survived by his wife and 3-year-old child.

Rest in Peace Bro…We’ll Continue The Watch
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Officer Down

Trooper Patrick Ambroise
Florida Highway Patrol
End of Watch: Saturday, May 15, 2010
Age: 35
Tour of Duty: 4 years
Badge Number: Not available
Cause of Death: Automobile accident

Trooper Patrick Ambroise was killed when his patrol car was struck from behind while he was stopped on the shoulder of the Florida Turnpike, near Okeechobee Road.

A vehicle being driven on the turnpike suddenly veered onto the shoulder and struck Trooper Ambroise's 2006 Crown Victoria from behind, causing it to burst into flames, and trapping him inside.

The driver of the vehicle that caused the crash was seriously injured.

Trooper Ambroise had served with the Florida Highway Patrol for four years. He is survived by his wife, two young daughters, mother, and five siblings.

Rest in Peace Bro…We’ll Continue The Watch

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Time Square Attack

Good look at the Time Square Attack

Uncomfortable Truths and the Times Square Attack
May 6, 2010 | 0856 GMT


By Ben West and Scott Stewart

Faisal Shahzad, the first suspect arrested for involvement in the failed May 1 Times Square bombing attempt, was detained just before midnight on May 3 as he was attempting to depart on a flight from Kennedy International Airport in New York. Authorities removed Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, from an Emirates Airlines flight destined for Dubai. On May 4, Shahzad appeared at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan for his arraignment.

Authorities say that Shahzad is cooperating and that he insists he acted alone. However, this is contradicted by reports that the attack could have international links. On Feb. 3, Shahzad returned from a trip to Pakistan, where, according to the criminal complaint, he said he received militant training in Waziristan, a key hub of the main Pakistani Taliban rebel coalition, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Authorities are reportedly seeking three other individuals in the United States in connection with the May 1 Times Square bombing attempt.

Investigative efforts at this point are focusing on identifying others possibly connected to the plot and determining whether they directed Shahzad in the bombing attempt or merely enabled him. From all indications, authorities are quickly collecting information on additional suspects from their homes and telephone-call records, and this is leading to more investigations and more suspects. While the May 1 attempt was unsuccessful, it came much closer to killing civilians in New York than other recent attempts, such as the Najibullah Zazi case in September 2009 and the Newburgh plot in May 2009. Understanding how Shahzad and his possible associates almost pulled it off is key to preventing future threats.


Shahzad’s Mistakes

U.S. Department of Justice via Getty Images


While the device left in the Nissan Pathfinder parked on 45th Street, just off Times Square, ultimately failed to cause any damage, the materials present could have caused a substantial explosion had they been prepared and assembled properly. The bomb’s components were common, everyday products that would not raise undue suspicion when purchased — especially if they were bought separately. They included the following:

Some 113 kilograms (250 pounds) of urea-based fertilizer. A diagram released by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that the fertilizer was found in a metal gun locker in the back of the Pathfinder. The mere presence of urea-based fertilizer does not necessarily indicate that the materials in the gun locker composed a viable improvised explosive mixture, but urea-based fertilizer can be mixed with nitric acid to create urea nitrate, the main explosive charge used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. (It is not known if the fertilizer in the Pathfinder had been used to create urea nitrate.) Urea nitrate is a popular improvised mixture that can be detonated by a blasting cap and does not require a high-explosive booster charge like ammonium nitrate does; 250 pounds of urea nitrate would be enough to destroy the Pathfinder completely and create a substantial blast effect. If detonated near a large crowd of people, such an explosion could produce serious carnage.
Two 19-liter (5-gallon) containers of gasoline. If ignited, this fuel would have added an impressive fireball to the explosion but, in practical terms, would not have added much to the explosive effect of the device. Most of the damage would have been done by the urea nitrate. Reports indicate that consumer-grade fireworks (M-88 firecrackers) had been placed between the two containers of gasoline and were detonated, but they do not appear to have ruptured the containers and did not ignite the gasoline inside them. It appears that the firecrackers were intended to be the initiator for the device and were apparently the source of a small fire in the carpet upholstery of the Pathfinder. This created smoke that alerted a street vendor that something was wrong. The firecrackers likely would not have had sufficient detonation velocity to initiate urea nitrate.
Three 75-liter (20-gallon) propane tanks. Police have reported that the tank valves were left unopened, which has led others to conclude that this was yet another mistake on the part of Shahzad. Certainly, opening the tanks’ valves, filling the vehicle with propane gas and then igniting a spark would have been one way to cause a large explosion. Another way would have been to use explosives (such as the adjacent fertilizer mixture or gasoline) to rupture the tanks, which would have created a large amount of force and fire since the propane inside the tanks was under considerable pressure. Shahzad may have actually been attempting to blast open the propane tanks, which would explain why the valves were closed. Propane tanks are commonly used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in many parts of the world. Even without detonating, the propane tanks would have become very large and dangerous projectiles if the fertilizer had detonated.
That none of these three forms of explosive and incendiary materials detonated indicates that the bombmaker was likely a novice and had problems with the design of his firing chain. While a detailed schematic of the firing chain has not been released, the bombmaker did not seem to have a sophisticated understanding of explosive materials and the techniques required to properly detonate them. This person may have had some rudimentary training in explosives but was clearly not a trained bombmaker. It is one thing to attend a class at a militant camp where you are taught how to use military explosives and quite another to create a viable IED from scratch in hostile territory.

However, the fact that Shahzad was apparently able to collect all of the materials, construct an IED (even a poorly designed one) and maneuver it to the intended target without being detected exhibits considerable progress along the attack cycle. Had the bombmaker properly constructed a viable device with these components and if the materials had detonated, the explosion and resulting fire likely would have caused a significant number of casualties given the high density and proximity of people in the area.

It appears that Shahzad made a classic “Kramer jihadist” mistake: trying to make his attack overly spectacular and dramatic. This mistake was criticized by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi last year when he called for grassroots operatives to conduct simple attacks instead of complex ones that are more prone to failure. In the end, Shahzad (who was probably making his first attempt to build an IED by himself) tried to pull off an attack so elaborate that it failed to do any damage at all.

As STRATFOR has discussed for many years now, the devolution of the jihadist threat from one based primarily on al Qaeda the group to one emanating from a wider jihadist movement means that we will see jihadist attacks being carried out more frequently by grassroots or lone wolf actors. These actors will possess a lesser degree of terrorist tradecraft than the professional terrorists associated with the core al Qaeda group, or even regional jihadist franchises like the TTP. This lack of tradecraft means that these operatives are more likely to make mistakes and attempt attacks against relatively soft targets, both characteristics seen in the failed May 1 attack.


Jihadist Attack Models

Under heavy pressure since the 9/11 attacks, jihadist planners wanting to strike the U.S. mainland face many challenges. For one thing, it is difficult for them to find operatives capable of traveling to and from the United States. This means that, in many cases, instead of using the best and brightest operatives that jihadist groups have, they are forced to send whoever can get into the country. In September 2009, U.S. authorities arrested Najibullah Zazi, a U.S. citizen who received training at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 2008 before returning to the United States to begin an operation that would involve detonating explosive devices on New York City subways.

Zazi’s journey likely raised red flags with authorities, who subsequently learned through communication intercepts of his intent to construct explosive devices. Zazi had no explosives training or experience other than what he had picked during his brief stint at the training camp in Pakistan, and he attempted to construct the devices only with the notes he had taken during the training. Zazi had difficulty producing viable acetone peroxide explosives, similar to what appears to have happened with Shahzad in his Times Square attempt. Zazi also showed poor tradecraft by purchasing large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and acetone in an attempt to make triacetone triperoxide, a very difficult explosive material to use because of its volatility. His unusual shopping habits raised suspicion and, along with other incriminating evidence, eventually led to his arrest before he could initiate his planned attack.

Other plots in recent years such as the Newburgh case as well as plots in Dallas and Springfield, Ill., all three in 2009, failed because the suspects behind the attacks reached out to others to acquire explosive material instead of making it themselves. (In the latter two cases, Hosam Smadi in Dallas and Michael Finton in Springfield unwittingly worked with FBI agents to obtain fake explosive material that they thought they could use to attack prominent buildings in their respective cities and were subsequently arrested.) In seeking help, they made themselves vulnerable to interception, and local and federal authorities were able to infiltrate the cell planning the attack and ensure that the operatives never posed a serious threat. Unlike these failed plotters, Shahzad traveled to Pakistan to receive training and used everyday materials to construct his explosive devices, thus mitigating the risk of being discovered.

A much more successful model of waging a jihadist attack on U.S. soil is the case of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in November 2009. Instead of traveling to Yemen or Pakistan for training, which would have aroused suspicion, Maj. Hasan used skills he already possessed and simple means to conduct his attack, something that kept his profile low (although he was under investigation for posting comments online seemingly justifying suicide attacks). Ultimately, Hasan killed more people with a handgun than the recently botched or thwarted attacks involving relatively complicated IEDs.

With AQAP leader al-Wahayshi advocating smaller and easier attacks against softer targets in the fall of 2009 (shortly before Maj. Hasan’s attack at Fort Hood), it appears that the tactic is making its way through jihadist circles. This highlights the risk that ideologically radicalized individuals (as Shahzad certainly appears to be) can still pose to the public, despite their seeming inability to successfully construct and deploy relatively complex IEDs.


Slipping Through the Cracks?

It is likely that U.S. authorities were aware of Shahzad due to his recent five-monthlong trip to Pakistan. Authorities may also have intercepted the telephone conversations that Shahzad had with people in Pakistan using a pre-paid cell phone (which are more anonymous but still traceable). Such activities usually are noticed by authorities, and we anticipate that there will be a storm in the media in the coming days and weeks about how the U.S. government missed signs pointing to Shahzad’s radicalization and operational activity. The witch hunt would be far more intense if the attack had actually succeeded — as it could well have. However, as we’ve noted in past attacks such as the July 7, 2005, London bombings, the universe of potential jihadists is so wide that the number of suspects simply overwhelms the government’s ability to process them all. The tactical reality is that the government simply cannot identify all potential attackers in advance and thwart every attack. Some suspects will inevitably fly under the radar.

This reality flies in the face of the expectation that governments somehow must prevent all terrorist attacks. But the uncomfortable truth in the war against jihadist militants is that there is no such thing as complete security. Given the diffuse nature of the threat and of the enemy, and the wide availability of soft targets in open societies, there is simply no intelligence or security service in the world capable of identifying every aspiring militant who lives in or enters a country and of pre-empting their intended acts of violence.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

A Great Article on Field Training

I recieved this from Police One and it is a great article on how being a FTO is not just something for getting a few more dollars in the paycheck....

Walking the Walk with Lt. John Bennett

"Teach them properly, Major"

Improper training can create an inflated sense of confidence — in effect, one’s confidence exceeding one’s competence

In one scene of the 1989 Civil War movie “Glory,” Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick), inspects the level of readiness of his troops and is witness to trainees undergoing marksmanship training. Col. Shaw watches as one soldier in particular, being cheered on by his fellow trainees, demonstrates his proficiency with the rifle while taking slow and well-aimed shots.

Col. Shaw approaches the soldier, comments on his marksmanship ability and urges him to demonstrate once more. As the soldier begins readying his muzzle-loader for his next shot, Col. Shaw begins inducing stress upon the new soldier through forceful commands to load faster and faster and firing a revolver behind the man while he continues to reload and shoot.

The soldier is visibly shaking as he now struggles to perform under stress what he once was able to do smoothly while at ease. After this demonstration, Col. Shaw approaches the Major conducting the training and tells him:

“Teach them properly, Major.”

In this movie scene, we see vividly demonstrated how improper training can create an inflated sense of confidence based on faulty teaching methodology. In turn, this can result in one’s confidence exceeding one’s competence.

In a law enforcement context, the field-training officer assumes the role of the Major; and it is the job of that field-training officer to ‘Teach them properly.’

The field-training officer is arguably the most important cog in the machine that is the first-level training arm of the department. With various field-training philosophies aside, an FTO program is only as good as its trainers, their levels of dedication and belief in their mission.

Newly hired police recruits are first exposed to the law enforcement way of doing things during their time in basic academy classes. However, by the very nature of the mission undertaken by the police academy, the course work these recruits are exposed to during this time is a broad generalization of what they must know with regards to performing their jobs effectively and correctly. It is when the recruit completes basic academy-level training and enters the FTO program that they are really exposed to the culture of their particular department and the ‘nuances’ of the types of policing their particular community requires... basically, ‘our way of doing things.’

As a new recruit myself, I vividly remember a grizzly (and large) veteran patrol lieutenant explaining to me that I would first go through the police academy and once I returned, they’d show me how things were ‘really’ done. As arrogant or trite as that may sound, it is the reality of the recruit training process.

A new recruit comes to an agency as a very moldable individual. His or her attitude and outlook — toward their coworkers, the department as a whole, and of the community which they will serve — is greatly influenced by their experiences with their field training officers. Additionally, if these recruits are not taught properly, they exit the field-training program with flawed technical competence and a false sense of confidence that can and will continue to perpetuate itself long into their career.

A perfect example lies with the standardized field sobriety tests established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Many officers seem to have forgotten (if they ever learned it) that these tests are called ‘standardized’ for a reason. These tests were designed and validated by the courts on a national level. This means that they must be performed in the exact same manner and in the exact same sequence from California to New York and all areas in between for them to be valid in court, every time.

However, too often I observe officers not adhering to this strict protocol when administering these exercises in the field. If the FTO himself is not competent in performing this task, then how can they effectively pass that task along to their trainee? If the trainee is taught improperly and allowed to complete the field-training program, they continue performing their jobs improperly as patrol officers in the field — and even as future FTOs — and it erodes professionalism and effectiveness. It should be easy to see how this issue can ‘water-down’ the overall professionalism and effectiveness of an entire department if field-training programs continually turn out improperly trained recruits.

An FTO’s development should be an ongoing endeavor in that they should not limit their experience to those times in which they are assigned a trainee. Due to the nature of their task, an FTO must develop and maintain a broad knowledge base and be able to pass this information along to their charge in an effective manner. This can be a very daunting task. Often, the more areas in which an individual works to excel results in their being mediocre in many and above average in none.

However, it is not impossible. One way to accomplish this is to empower the FTO as a trainer department-wide; not limiting their mission to times they are engaged in the field-training process. FTO’s can be utilized on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis to develop and provide in-service training blocks of instruction to the department as a whole.

One of the most effective ways to become more knowledgeable in a given subject is to research then disseminate it through a period of instruction (lecture, training bulletins, etc). I’ve done this several times throughout my career on topics ranging from neighborhood watch-type groups to asset seizure and forfeiture, and many in between. None of these topics were among my ‘specialties’ but through this technique, I was able to add valuable knowledge to my repertoire and improve overall as a result.

The position of field-training officer is one of great responsibility and should not be taken lightly. Whereas the police academy may forge the recruit into the basic shape of a police officer, it is the FTO who hones their edge. If an FTO is to be effective, they must realize they are teachers and accept that role; and they must believe in their mission. We often look to our pool of FTO’s and their performance in that capacity as future leaders in our department. An FTO is very much like a sergeant in that they are in a leadership position and must lead; and must do so by good example. This affords the FTO an excellent opportunity to test and develop their leadership and instructional skills at a one-on-one level with a trainee before moving on to a position with a larger span of control, such as that of a sergeant.

About the author: John Bennett is a lieutenant with the Charleston (IL) Police Department and is in his nineteenth year with that agency. John’s career has been spent at the patrol-level and includes an eight year stint as the department’s first canine handler; during which time he handled a dual-trained Malinois, Rex. John is a black belt martial artist and in addition to his patrol and supervisory duties at the police department, is the chief firearms and defensive tactics instructor for his agency. John currently supervises a training staff of five instructors. An instructor himself, John holds numerous instructor certifications and specializes in use of force, defensive tactics and tactical firearms instruction. John has trained officers both in and outside his agency for more than 16 years; nationally and abroad. John can be reached by emailing rexdog8394@yahoo.com.