July 30, 2007 – Page 2268
At a conference for police chiefs in Boston last fall, Homeland Security Secretary
That network is getting severely strained, however, and the skills are walking out the door and not being replaced. In a trend that has been overshadowed nationally by the Army’s recruiting problems and turnover at federal security agencies, many cities and states have a shortage of police that could impair their role in homeland security.
As experienced police officers retire or sign on with federal agencies and private companies, some cities, counties and states are having trouble filling their recruit classes, despite an upsurge in patriotism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In several cities — New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles among them — the number of sworn police officers actually declined between 2000 and 2004, according to a Justice Department census.
“Most police departments thought after 9/11 they would get this huge influx of people that wanted to become police officers. That didn’t happen,” said Major Craig McQueen of the Miami Police Department. “The numbers are not going up.”
Police departments find it particularly difficult to recruit and retain intelligence specialists and develop special counterterrorism squads. Such specialists usually prefer to work for the federal government.
“Yes, we would love to have more of them, but it’s difficult because everybody is pulling from the pool,” said McQueen, who commands his department’s special investigations section, which handles covert homeland security investigations. “You have to have experience,” he said.
Police departments, particularly those in older cities in the Northeast, have struggled with numbers and recruiting for some years. Municipal budget cuts have not helped. The four police surveys the Justice Department has conducted since 1992 show a steady reduction in the rate of growth in the nation’s police ranks — city cops, county sheriff’s deputies and state troopers. The cumulative force grew just 3 percent between 2000 and 2004, when there were 731,903 sworn officers for the entire country. The nation’s population grew 4 percent in the same period.
In addition to retirements and turnover, the war in Iraq has exacerbated police shortages, mainly because between 7 percent and 10 percent of public safety officers are members of the National Guard, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Estimates of the number of private security guards in the country are difficult to come by. Industry associations say the total increased markedly after the 2001 terrorist attacks but has since declined, although it remains higher than it was before the al Qaeda attacks.
The federal government’s official strategies for homeland security and the war on terrorism cast local and state police in the supporting role of keeping order immediately after any attack. But as Chertoff pointed out, police officers, particularly those in big cities, can play a crucial role in detecting and disrupting terrorist networks.
Immediately after the 2001 attacks, state and local police officers took on counterterrorism duties in addition to their usual public safety duties, and this has remained consistent over the past six years. Only a few departments in major cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, were able to build up counterterrorism bureaus.
Recruiting difficulties combined with a small pool of people able to perform intelligence duties have made it difficult for state and local agencies to address the void in what the industry calls intelligence-led policing for the homeland security mission.
“Everyone is competing for analysts now,” said Jim McMahon, chief of staff of the police chiefs association. He is a former New York State Police superintendent who from 2003 through 2006 advised the state’s governor, Republican George E. Pataki, on homeland security. “For most instances, we can’t just go out and hire someone,” he said. “The market is not there for what everyone needs, because it wasn’t a field that people had thought about going into.”
New York has addressed this problem two ways: When officers come back from the military with intelligence experience, they are recruited to work at the local and state level; and the state has created education programs to introduce college students to the intelligence field and to certify existing public safety officers in intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities.
Another way governments at all levels have worked around the shortage of intelligence officers is through regional “fusion” centers where agencies can share information and resources.
McQueen said more federal funds should be directed toward building up local intelligence units and replacing the veteran officers in these responsibilities. But state and local police departments have suffered from a decrease in federal funds during the Bush administration. And new funds that police departments have received from the Department of Homeland Security have been earmarked almost entirely for equipment and personal protective gear, not personnel. That emphasis has changed recently, and, for the first time, the six highest risk regions in the country are allowed to use some of their counter–terrorism funds for intelligence personnel-related expenses.
Some departments were able to enhance or establish counter–terrorism programs, but that didn’t happen across the board, and most remain modest operations. For instance, in Miami, before 2001, there was one lieutenant and one officer in what is now the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The office now has one captain, one sergeant and three officers. McQueen’s unit, the Special Investigations Section, has stayed essentially the same since the attacks, but it did send some officers to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, he said. Filling this void is not easy.
Additional federal funding for local and state police agencies to build up their intelligence capabilities is key, McQueen said. But in the meantime, the best way to address the problem with limited resources is community outreach. “If you see something,” he said, “say something.”