Tactical Community Policing Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Katherine McQuay 00:08 This is Katherine McQuay with the COPS Office. With us today is Detective Douglas Comfort with the Criminal Investigations Bureau of the Fairfax County Police Department. Det. Comfort has been a sworn law enforcement officer for over 30 years and is responsible for the investigation of offenses related to domestic and international terrorism for Fairfax County. And he’s here to talk with us today about tactical community policing. Detective, thank you for joining us. Detective David Comfort 00:36 Well, thank you for inviting me. Katherine 00:38 First of all, could you tell us, what is tactical community policing? David 00:42 We took the community policing concept and tried to go backwards with it, and go back and see how it was first introduced, and how the community was targeted or engaged as part of that process, and then took the initial phases of community policing and melded into them specific items that would be related to homeland security. So the idea of the program was to take something back to the community to get them engaged in homeland security issues. It involved a number of different things. One, the initial community policing was kind of programmed into us, and we didn’t have a lot of input in the way it initially was done. The reception amongst law enforcement sometimes wasn’t exactly a positive effect. The second thing we looked at was, to go into the community and do community policing, we really need to first assess the community to determine what the community is looking for, the disengaged groups within the community, and to try and get everybody to meld together and work for that same process. So, it involved 1) looking at the cultural issues, looking at the various criminal organizations. I draw community policing into the criminal organizations. I mean, if we charge somebody with an offense, they may become a CI but, until that time, they’re a source of information like anybody else in the community. We tried to take it from ground zero. First thing they do is train the officers on the difference between information and intelligence. So we use part of the intelligence-led policing model to train the officers to go out and secure the information or at least try to get the information from the community members about the things that bother them the most. And the reason we do that is, there’s a balancing scale in the community. The more fearful a community is, the more difficult it is to get them engaged, and they don’t have the ability to have control of their situation. So what we looked at were those things that caused the most fear in a community, and then we worked on those particular points in order to bring the scales back down to even, or, preferably, lower than even. Because the lesser the fear, the greater amount of control the community has. When we do the tactical community policing, we’re looking for specific things that we want them to look for. Department of Homeland Security has “See something, say something.” We went back and said, “What are you looking for, and who do I tell? Who do I call? How do I get the information?” Going back to basics, again, and kind of revamping the program as it’s come through, part of the training that the officers provide the community is, “What is a suspicious event? What makes something suspicious?” And then once they determine that it is, or that they feel it is, then who do you go to and how do you get that information to us? Much like anybody in law enforcement, if they pass information to another law enforcement member, they get rather concerned if they don’t hear back. So as part of tactical community policing is taking that information back to the community and saying, “This is the event that you called me on. Somebody is taking pictures of the tank farm.” And we get two citizens who are driving by and see somebody taking a picture. They call the police. The car is gone but we might get a tag number. We run it down, we find out it was a father and a daughter working on a project for school. Then we call them back and we say, 1) “Thank you for calling.” The second thing is we tell them, “We’ve investigated the event and found that it didn’t have any relation to any possible domestic or international terrorism event, and we wanted you to know that. But we also want you to know that the next time you drive by and you see somebody filming, we want you to do exactly what you did before.” So, that’s the basis of the concepts all the way through that program. We introduce them to some things that maybe they never really thought of. We talk about fraudulent documents. We talk about counterfeit goods. We introduce them to the basic principles—in other words, “Why are we looking at that and why is it important to us?” We talk about terrorist finance. We talk about terrorist organizations’ need to have some sort of financing, and you’re not really thinking that it’s part of it when in reality it is. So we want to know if you go into a store and they’re selling bootleg CDs or they’re selling Gucci purses and stuff, and things that don’t look right. 1) Because it’s a health issue for the community; 2) because it’s an economic issue; and 3) everything that’s done wrong is done for a purpose. Every criminal act or every criminal activity that occurs, somebody’s profiting from that illegally, and, likewise, it’s directly affecting the community. We work under, really, the broken windows theory. Katherine 05:53 Thank you. Now the course—the Tactical Community Policing for Homeland Security Initiatives course—talks about an “All Crimes” approach to terrorism. Can you tell us, what is an “All Crimes” approach and how does it relate to community policing and homeland security? David 06:09 If you look across the board since 9/11 at the number of cases that have been prosecuted because somebody was accused of, or convicted of, being a terrorist, it’s only a handful. It’s a minute amount of the cases that actually go to court. And from other crimes that we’ve dealt with in the past, we know that sometimes we’re not able to charge somebody with a terrorist act, but we can charge them with an associated crime. For local law enforcement, our primary purpose is to develop the information and, if at all possible, disrupt it and keep it from happening. I would rather make an arrest for shoplifting than have to arrest somebody for driving a plane into the World Trade Center. So the important thing that we’re looking at is—it doesn’t make any difference what the crime is. During the course of the investigation we may find we have a member of a terrorist cell, we may find we have somebody who’s contemplating a terrorist act. Even though they don’t get to the point where we’re going to make the big charge, the small charge prevents it, disrupts it from happening, and therefore we don’t have to deal with the aftermath of that event. No charge, from a traffic offense, to fraudulent documents, or anything else—there’s no charge that’s too minor. Katherine 07:31 Now, you’ve talked about this generally but what are some other benefits for a state or local law enforcement officer taking the Tactical Community Policing course? David 07:41 It gives them a basis. It gives them some guidelines to work from. It refreshes their memory of things they may have forgotten. They may learn new things that they didn’t associate with community policing being done. I mean, we go back to the basics: information gathering, sources of information in the community. Those are things we got in the academy. If an officer has been on 15, 20, 25 years, you have a tendency to get into a rut of things that you do. What this does is help refresh and justify why that information is important. Katherine 08:18 And how would someone find out more about this course and how to take it? David 08:23 The course, currently under the grant, is operated by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation in Richmond, so if they contact VCPI then VCPI would be in a position to offer that course or negotiate the offering of that course for whatever department or community is involved. Katherine 08:41 Terrific! Thank you so much for your time and your expertise. David 08:44 You’re certainly welcome. Beat Exit Voiceover: 08:46 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####