Homeland security challenges for the Washington D.C. police, I
Published 5 February 2010
Protecting the U.S. capital on a local level poses unique challenges, but it also offers advantages; the police department must accommodate both traditional local concerns and diverse needs related to the presence of multiple federal government and military organizations; yet, the department also can tap those myriad government agencies for vital resources and information that help it counter or respond to terrorist threats
In Washington, D.C., the phrase “think globally, act locally has” is not an abstraction, but the guiding principle of the daily activities of the local police. The Metropolitan Police Department of the U.S. capital is accelerating its implementation and use of information technology to meet the terrorist threat that looms over the city. This includes adapting everyday police technologies for homeland security and counterterrorism operations, and it also involves bringing in new capabilities from the civil and private sectors.
Signal Magazine’s Robert K. Ackerman writes that protecting the capital on a local level poses unique challenges, but it also offers advantages. The police department must accommodate both traditional local concerns and diverse needs related to the presence of multiple federal government and military organizations. Yet, the department also can tap those myriad government agencies for vital resources and information that help it counter or respond to terrorist threats.
Cathy L. Lanier is the chief of police, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Washington, D.C. She moved into her position as MPD chief after heading the department’s Office of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. She relates that when she was creating that office, she was both running an operational division and developing policy and guidance for the entire department’s role in homeland security and counterterrorism. In those positions, she would assemble a plan for policies and procedures for the chief to approve. Just when she brought her finished plan to the chief, she became the chief and assumed responsibility for approving and implementing the plan and its elements.
She says that, as chief, she has learned that policies often are far away from the reality on the street and thus may not be workable. Her homeland security policy recommendations, however, were based on the command’s operational status. “I put it together as a hands-on operational person, and now [as chief] I don’t have to sit back and complain, ‘Whoever wrote this has no idea what it’s like on the street,’” Lanier says. While her plan has been tweaked to account for the evolution of the terrorist threat, she offers that she is happy with the progress that has been made in that plan.
Over the past few years, MPD spending on homeland security has remained relatively stable within its budget. The recent economic downturn has affected funding this year, but that decline is neither significant nor a detriment to maintaining department capabilities, the chief says.
Lanier points out that the department’s homeland security challenge has evolved significantly since 9/11. Originally, the department focused on rethinking how it does general policing. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the department joined other local police agencies in asking to be included in the information flow that would “connect the dots for terrorism.”
Ackerman writes that when the MPD was included in that information loop, it shifted its focus to evolving into an agency that can contribute information into that connect-the-dots analysis. Lanier explains that this entails being able to pick up on any subtle activity that needs to be entered into the analysis information flow.
She notes that the average MPD officer has about eighteen years’ experience on the force. So, the issue is not just training new recruits; it also involves training officers who have their own ways of policing that have been developed over nearly two decades of work on the streets. She adds that the department has met this challenge, and MPD officers now can identify subtle activity that needs to be noted and passed along the information chain.
