OK, so give about 10% of your attention to homegrown terrorists and the other 90% to the Islamists. Even then I think they would be putting about 10 times the emphasis they need to on the locals.
East Bay task force on guard
By Roman Gokhman
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 06/22/2008 12:02:27 AM PDT
DUBLIN — Last week, an officer from a local police department stopped a delivery truck driver for a traffic infraction. The officer noticed the driver was wearing a military uniform that would have given him access to sensitive areas of a military facility.
Suspicious, the officer began to question the man. When the driver revealed the uniform wasn't his, the officer immediately notified his department, which called the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group. Members of the group issued an alert to all other law enforcement agencies in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, warning about a man possibly posing as a military officer.
The incident turned out to be a false alarm. The man had been given the uniform by a friend and thought he looked good in it, said Larry Plummer, the team's coordinator.
"It was outstanding that the officer ... delivered that information to us quickly," said Plummer, a civilian employee of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and a member of the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group. "Most tips and leads turn out to be fairly innocuous. We're looking for the needle in the haystack."
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, caused law enforcement agencies around the country to rethink their defenses against threats. In 2005, the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group was formed. Since, the joint task force — made up of mostly civilian employees of Contra Costa and Alameda county sheriff's offices and Oakland police — has been collecting reports of suspicious activity from law enforcement agencies, infrastructure organizations such as airports and power companies, and the public in the two counties.
The reports are forwarded to local law enforcement agencies so they can keep track of possible threats.
The tips range from someone photographing an airport or a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plant, to an individual wearing camouflage in the middle of the night, or anything else that appears out of the ordinary. They often don't involve a threat from Middle East terrorists.
"We're interested in eco-terrorists and animal rights terrorists," said team member Michael Voss, a Contra Costa Sheriff's Office employee. "They are more of a threat to us right now than the international terrorists."
The team also acts as a conduit between local agencies, and state and federal governments.
Funded mostly by an Urban Area Security Initiative Grant, federal funding that became available after Sept. 11, the program's goal is "to cultivate and channel information in a better way," Plummer said.
"The thrust is information wasn't being shared from federal entities down to the state and to the local authorities," Plummer said.
Information wasn't being funneled the other way, either.
"After 9/11, one of the big deficiencies identified by the federal government is that there wasn't a unified mechanism to get the tips and leads from citizens and police officers, firefighters and (emergency medical services) personnel — those who are out in the community" Voss said. "That's why terrorism early warning groups were formed."
The East Bay team works out of a small, nondescript office in the Alameda County Office of Emergency Services in Dublin. Besides Plummer, coordinator for the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, it includes Voss, an intelligence analyst; Kelly Wilson, of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office; and Nubia Zamora, of the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office. There are two positions for Oakland police, but those are unfilled.
The members are assigned to the team by their departments and a typical assignment lasts three years, Plummer said. Three emergency medical services administrators work in an ad hoc capacity.
"We have contacts with every single police, fire, medical, hospital agency as well as most of our critical infrastructure in our two-county area," Voss said.
Every day, Voss added, he goes through 150 to 200 e-mails about suspicious activity. The tips can come from the public, local police, fire and medical agencies, and from the state government or the federal government.
"People on the street ... are usually the first to witness suspicious activity," Plummer said.
"We don't hold on to information," he said. "If Brentwood police calls us ... and says, 'I have somebody taking suspicious photos of, maybe, a PG&E facility ... and they're dressed in camouflage and they're out at 2 in the morning,' we take all that information, make a bulletin and send it out to all the law enforcement agencies."
The team is one arm of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center in San Francisco. There are four such centers in California — and many more across the United States.
They existed long before terrorism early warning groups, said Ron Brooks, director of the San Francisco center, which takes tips from the East Bay task force. One of the centers' first goals was to pass along intelligence about drug trafficking.
The Bay Area center passes along information to the California State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center in Sacramento, which then passes it along to a similar center in Washington, D.C.
Plummer said his team tries to make clear the difference between reporting suspicious activity and spying on neighbors.
"What we're doing is something that law enforcement does already, just in a different capacity," Plummer said. "While they are collecting information about homicides and robberies, we're doing it for other crimes. Terrorism is a crime."
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_9662971?source=rss