POLICE AND TERRORISM

Police and Terrorism

Police and Terrorism

In today's era, terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Nonetheless, after the disastrous event on 9/11, a number of people both internationally and domestically strived hard to look for the answer to the way such an event occurred. In its wake, police and other law enforcement departments have been strained to retrace their roles within the society as new queries emerged that were linked to the equilibrium between the security and safety of the public, the degree of cooperation with federal jurisdiction, the capability of mobilizing support from the community for intelligence activities and information-gathering, the ways to build up enough resources for both the response and the detection of incidents that could occur.

Currently, state police are observed to pursue the unparalleled homeland security and activities related to terrorism. For instance, the improvement of state intelligence synthesis points is a phenomenon that came after the 9/11 incident. Beside the need to comprehend the ways by which the roles of state have changed with the passage of time, there exists a need for examining the ways through which contemporary terrorism activities might be impacting the classical priorities of the state police, beside various different challenges that are emerging each day.

For instance, prior to the incident of 9/11 the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), together with local and state law enforcement agencies, performed significant functions if fighting drug trafficking, organized crime, bank robberies and financial crimes. One may suppose that local and state law enforcement agencies, by default, will become much concerned in such efforts, and provided the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new priority: “Protecting the U.S. from terrorists attacks” (Foster & Cordner, 2005). Nonetheless, the programs of federal grant that assists these attempts at the local and state levels, together with Edward Byrne Memorial Local and State Law Enforcement Assistance Grant and Community Oriented Policing Services program got dissolved or diminished after the incident of 9/11 (GIWG, 2004).

The police appear to be in a state of “tug of war” between numerous diverse growing responsibilities. Ahead of the additional roles of the homeland security, a number of state police agencies are even accountable for:

Helping federal officials with immigration investigation and enforcement;

Fighting computer crimes and identity theft;

Helping and managing to enforce new sex offender registries, and

Fighting contemporary synthetic drug epidemics such as methamphetamines.

Simultaneously, a number of police officers serve the National Guard and in the reserves and carry on to get stimulated for serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, which places a significant personnel demand at the state levels.

However, a number of disagreements exist regarding the appropriate law enforcement behavior, which fights terrorism but maintains personal liberties. As the battle against terrorism might call for few restrictions on the freedom of people, as it is the cost of vigilance, although these restrictions do not need to go beyond what is essential, having considered that specific threats. As lawyers argue that restrictions on individuals' fundamental rights need to be justified and they stress that limits of the fundamentally rights have ...