Political Science

The paper explains how global terrorism has affected local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and the necessary recommendations to improve these global challenges. The paper also suggests certain key issues related to provide adequate protection to the U.S. residents as well as measures to improve law enforcement agencies preparedness on a much larger scale.

GLOBAL TERRORISM AFFECTING SECURITY

Terrorism and its Implications
By the end of the Cold War, the nature of foreign threats to U.S. security had considerably changed.  What Americans worry about now is not a greater and significant military offensive from abroad, but rather more insidious assaults which may strike much closer to our environs and localities and thereby threatening lives and property and in addition, creating a climate of fear. It was with disbelief and shock that around the world, people saw the news footage of the events on September 11, 2001 of the planes-turned-missiles that saw the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and damage of the Pentagon. The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon had far reaching implications and proved that terrorists acts were no longer the only threat that Americans faced from abroad.

After the 911 attacks, the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created which provides tuition free and low-cost training to many law enforcement agencies. Programs are conducted regularly at selected sites throughout the country and are usually hosted by a local law enforcement agency in the area. Agencies have bolstered their preparedness levels considerably after the greater threat of global terrorism throughout the country, although variation does exist in the approach to preparedness. Prior to 911, only a few law enforcement agencies were involved with counter-terrorism operation, whereas today, the number has risen manifolds of agencies dealing with terrorist related hoaxes (primarily anthrax related). Large steps were thus taken such as increasing the number of personnel engaged in emergency response and chemical, biological and radiological attacks. Resources were re-allocated to focus on terrorism preparedness and much greater support was provided to improve communications interoperability as well as the training on the incident command system. Certain law enforcement agencies that perceived the risk of increased terrorist attacks were more likely to undertake the necessary steps to improve their level of preparedness.

To counter such challenges, it is important to reduce the differences between the levels of preparedness approach from one law enforcement agencies to the other. Support needs to be provided to fully train all law enforcement agencies to their maximum potential so that their approach to counter-terrorism does not vary and is at par with the best available service in the country. There is a need to integrate law enforcement assets at all levels of the government and they should also integrate terrorism prevention responsibilities into the criminal justice system at large. The progress of the counter-terrorism programs must be gauged continuously for necessary feedback and to cater for room for improvement. By establishing a principal point of oversight and review, the Homeland Security would definitely benefit in providing adequate protection to our nation in general (Hoffman, 1998).