• Using Epidemiological Models to Explain Spread of Social Unrest, Rioting

    Do social unrest and riots spread as infectious diseases do? Researchers used the SIR epidemiological model, known for modeling infectious disease spread, and applied it to social unrest. The SIR technique separates the population into susceptible, infectious, and recovered individuals. “Within a rioting context, someone ‘susceptible’ is a potential rioter, an ‘infected individual’ is an active rioter, and a ‘recovered person’ is one that stopped rioting,” explained one researcher. “Rioting spreads when effective contact between an active rioter and a potential rioter occurs.”

  • DHS Authorizes Domestic Surveillance to Protect Statues and Monuments

    You might not imagine that the U.S. intelligence community would have much stake in local protests over monuments and statues, Steve Vladeck and Benjamin Wittes write, but you’d be wrong. An unclassified DHS memo, provided to Lawfare, makes clear that the authorized intelligence activity by DHS personnel covers significantly more than protecting federal personnel or facilities. It appears to also include planned vandalism of Confederate (and other historical) monuments and statues, whether federally owned or not. “[W]e do not accept that graffiti and vandalism are remotely comparable threats to the homeland [as attacks on federal buildings] — or that they justify this kind of federal response even if, in the right circumstances, such activity would technically constitute a federal crime,” Vladeck and Wittes conclude.

  • German police under the pall of right-wing extremists

    German security experts warn about the lax, ineffective way in which German security authorities have dealt with the growing presence of extreme far-right elements in police ranks, calling the rejectionist attitude of the police leadership dangerous. This is consistent with findings from Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). On 9 July, Interior Minister Seehofer presented the BfV’s 2019 annual report. He spoke of sharp rises in anti-Semitic, right-wing extremist and racist crimes in Germany, and called right-wing extremism the country’s greatest security threat.

  • The Numbers Don’t Lie: White People Are Not More Likely than Black People to Be Killed by Police

    Black people represented 12 percent of the U.S. population, but they make up 25 percent of the deaths in police shootings. White people represented 62 percent of the population — and make up 54 percent of the deaths in encounters with police. Last week President Trump, in a CBS News interview asserted that “More white people” are killed by the police every year. Matt Miller, an expert on police and policing at Northeastern University, describes Trump’s response as a “grotesque” misdirection that fails to account for the fact that Black people are killed by police at a higher rate than white people. “He is using the truth to tell a lie,” Miller said of Trump. “Or at the very least to mislead, which in either case shows an indifference to the critical question: Why are Black people still dying [at such high rate] at the hands of law enforcement?”

  • What the Heck Are Federal Law Enforcement Officers Doing in Portland?

    With racial justice protests going on in Portland, Oregon, since 25 May, more than 100 federal law enforcement officers showed up in the city over the past few days — without being asked to do so, and with the mayor, sheriff, and governor asking them to leave because, these local officials say, the presence of these federal agents only aggravates the situation. Steve Vladeck writes that to make matters worse, “those officers (a) are not wearing identifiable uniforms or other insignia, (b) are not driving marked law enforcement vehicles, and (c) are not identifying themselves either publicly or even to those whom they have detained and arrested.” He adds: “even if the federal officers are technically complying with the relevant statutes, there’s something more than just unseemly about camouflaged officers who refuse to identify themselves or their employer purporting to conduct arrests on the streets of American cities. Whether these officers are in fact abusing their authorities or not remains to be seen, but either answer would be deeply troubling.”  

  • “Gun Culture 3.0” Is Missing Link to Understand U.S. Gun Culture

    Leading firearm violence prevention researchers are first to use data to show differences in gun culture across the country, identifying gun cultures around recreation, self-defense, and politics. The new research shows that gun ownership means very different things in different parts of the United States.

  • White Supremacist Prosecutions Roundup

    Since 9/11, national counterterrorism strategies have focused largely on foreign terrorist groups—like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda—and federal prosecutors have used specifically tailored criminal statutes to prosecute individuals affiliated with these groups. Emma Broches and Julia Solomon-Strauss write that over the past few years, however, the domestic terrorism landscape has shifted as a result of a growing threat from individuals and groups with racially motivated violent extremist ideologies—including white supremacist and anti-government views. This means that law enforcement groups face a different, and potentially more challenging, set of obstacles to successfully counter this threat.

  • Drivers Are Hitting Protesters as Memes of Car Attacks Spread

    Vehicles are becoming increasingly popular weapons that terrorists and other extremists around the globe use to intimidate, harm and kill. Cars and trucks are easily accessible, require little skill to operate and can facilitate unpredictable attacks with mass casualties.

  • Massive Blow to U.K. Organized Crime after Police Infiltrate Encrypted Communication Platform in U.K. Biggest Ever Police Operation

    British law enforcement officials say they have made their biggest ever breakthrough against organized crime after hacking into an encrypted communications system used to plan drug deals and murder plots. Entire organized crime groups dismantled in Operation Venetic, which resulted in 746 arrests, and £54 million criminal cash, and over two tons of drugs seized so far.

  • U.S. Facing Growing Terrorism Problem, with White Supremacists the “Most Significant Threat”: Report

    A new report by terrorism experts at the conservative-leaning CSIS thinktank says that the United States faces a growing terrorism problem which will likely worsen over the next year. The most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between 1 January and 8 May 2020. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election.

  • In France, Drones, Apps and Racial Profiling

    In the wake of the January 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the November 2015 terrorist attacks on several targets in Paris, France saw more and more troops patrolling the streets of major cities alongside the police, and the declaration of a state of emergency, which gave the state vast new powers to monitor citizens. Many in France fear this is happening again, under the umbrella of measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Critics point to a raft of areas where they believe personal freedoms have been compromised under the health emergency, which saw France imposing one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns. Lisa Bryant writes for VOA that, to be sure, similar concerns are being echoed elsewhere around the globe as governments fight the pandemic. But in France – where authorities still promote the country’s revolution-era moniker as the “land of human rights” – activists say the new measures fit a years’-long pattern. 

  • Northern Ireland’s Lessons for American Policing

    Not that long ago, Americans would regularly go to Northern Ireland to offer advice on reforming the region’s notoriously repressive policing. Martin S. Flaherty writes that happily for Northern Ireland, and tragically for the United States, the lessons now run in the other direction. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement changed Northern Ireland, and one of the major changes was a profound reform of policing methods – and of the police itself: The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland’s police force, which reflected the Protestant majority almost exclusively, was replaced with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which was much more reflective of Northern Ireland’s society and sensibilities. ““None of this is to say that policing in Northern Ireland today lacks problems or critics. But the PSNI is nonetheless widely regarded as a substantial step in the right direction,” Flaherty writes. “Those seeking a hopeful model for change would do well to look to a land where change once seemed hopeless.”

  • U.S. Army Soldier Charged with Plotting “Mass Casualty” Attack on His Own Unit

    A U.S. Army soldier, 22, has been charged with plotting a mass attack on his unit by sending sensitive military information to the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a U.K.-based occult-obsessed, neo-Nazi, white supremacist group, the Justice Department announced Monday. O9Ahas affiliates around the world, including the United States, where they are associated with the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.

  • DHS Warns Boogaloo Bois May Be Targeting Washington, D.C.

    On Monday, DHS has circulated intelligence memos to law enforcement agencies around the country, warning public safety officials that Boogaloo Bois, an extremist anti-government movement, may be targeting Washington, D.C. for violent attacks. The intelligence assessment stated that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of U.S. law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here.”

  • MI5, Prevent Deemed Reading Attack Suspect Not Worth Investigation

    Saturday knife attack in Reading, U.K., in which three people were killed, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, but investigators say that the 25-year old suspect’s long history of serious mental health issues, exacerbated by heavy drug use, is also being considered. In the last two years, the Libyan national, who was granted asylum in Britain in 2018, was investigated twice for possible ties to Jihadi extremists, but counterterrorism specialists at Prevent and MI5 determined that he had no clear ideology, posed no threat to the public, and required additional mental health care.