Terror Alerts

May, 2009

Brazil jumps aboard Iran's Latin American bandwagon

·        SWINE FLU: The new H1N1 flu virus is expected to surge in coming months in the southern hemisphere when the winter season begins, health experts say, calling for continued vigilance even if the virus appears to be mild. The new virus, which broke out in Mexico, has now infected more than 1,200 people in 21 countries. To date, 27 deaths have been confirmed, 26 in Mexico and one in the United States. Reuters has a factbox on the spread of the virus across the globe.

·        AFGHAN TURMOIL: Afghan security forces backed by Western warplanes have been battling insurgents in western Afghanistan after Taliban fighters publicly executed three former government employees. Violence has increased sharply in Afghanistan over the past year despite the growing number of U.S. and NATO troops, more than seven years after the Islamist Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces. The coming weeks will see the arrival of a wave of U.S. reinforcements, with 17,000 soldiers and marines joining a NATO force in the south.

·        PAKISTAN: Hundreds of residents are fleeing from Pakistan's Swat valley for safer places as security forces could soon launch an offensive against Taliban militants there. A February peace pact aimed at ending Taliban violence in the Swat valley northwest of the capital has all but collapsed as the government comes under U.S. pressure to get tough with the militants rather than appease them. Residents of Mingora said militants had surrounded a paramilitary force base at a power station in the town and others had taken up positions on buildings and were patrolling streets. This Reuters factbox gives background on Swat and the insurgency there.

·Pittsburgh looking at equipment, police training after shootings

By Rich Lord
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

	Officers in tactical gear wait outside in the Stanton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Saturday April 4, 2009. Pittsburgh police say a man wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. (AP Photo)
Related Articles: Special coverage: Pittsburgh mourns slain officersSadness, and a reminder for vigilanceOfficer ambush: Risks and awareness In the wake of tragedy, we work to "unfreeze" and better ourselvesSWAT teams review tactics in wake of cop killings Counter-ambush tactics for patrol officers

PITTSBURGH— Since April 4, when a nightmare scenario unfolded in Stanton Heights, Pittsburgh police have had no choice but to imagine what else they might face in the age of the AK-47.
"What if we had the actor go mobile [in a car or on foot] instead of stay stationary?" asked Officer Dan O'Hara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Local 1, which lost three of its members in the ambush for which Richard Poplawski is charged. "We would have been at an extreme disadvantage. We wouldn't have been able to handle him at a distance."
That's because Pittsburgh has chosen to train and arm its patrol officers for traditional roles such as interacting with the community, making arrests while minimizing use of force, and firing a handgun accurately when needed. Situations that require complex tactics and more firepower have fallen to the SWAT team.
That's going to change.
The Police Bureau announced last week that it will start training patrol officers to use rifles, and will buy 46 high-powered rifles for patrol cars and training. Public Safety Director Michael Huss said the city is looking at providing "active-shooter training," which would prepare patrol officers to hunt down a Columbine-type shooter and rescue the injured.
It hasn't been lost on local officers that the Stanton Heights tragedy happened during the same month as the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, when two students took the lives of 13 others. Some of those deaths happened while patrol officers waited for specialists to arrive.
Columbine made it "apparent that police training did not prepare officers to respond appropriately," said Joe Sullivan, chief inspector in charge of training for the Philadelphia Police Department. Even if a SWAT team comes quickly, he said, a shooter "can kill a lot of children in 15 to 20 minutes."
Pennsylvania's Municipal Police Officers' Education & Training Commission, or MPOETC, which sets annual training requirements for all local police, responded to Columbine in 2001, creating a six-hour course. It taught officers arriving at an ongoing shooting scene to form two four-man teams -- one to hunt the shooter (preferably with rifles), and another to rescue victims -- and to move through a dangerous environment in various formations.
At the time, though, Pittsburgh's bureau was under a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, instituted in 1997, meant to address allegations of brutality. Specialized officers and supervisors got the Columbine training, while all got another state-crafted course, titled Equality in Policing the Community.
"The judgment at that time was probably correct," said Officer O'Hara. But did it have a downside? "Had we had that training as opposed to the other training would we have been in a better position [on April 4]? Possibly."
Everyone interviewed agreed that no known training would have saved officers Eric Kelly, Paul J. Sciullo II or Stephen J. Mayhle. Stanton Heights "started as a domestic call and ended up as an ambush," noted MPOETC Director of Training Rudy M. Grubesky.
"These guys in Pittsburgh were just gunned down," said police Lt. Jim Glennon, of Lombard, Ill., the lead instructor for the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar, a police training organization. "I don't know a way you could have stopped that."
Pittsburgh Police Range Master Officer Robert Harrison said the city's philosophy has been influenced by "the fact that we have a 24/7 SWAT team," its 39 members dispersed through the zone stations and able to quickly muster to a scene. That takes some of the burden off of patrol officers.
The rifle training he's designed, though, will teach average officers how "to intervene to prevent further loss of life."
The consent decree still influences training, with the bureau putting officers through as much as 14 hours of training on ethics, cultural diversity and the proper use of force, above and beyond the 12 hours of coursework, plus first aid and shooting testing, demanded by the state. Putting rifle and active shooter training on top of that would mean fewer officers on the street, or higher salary and overtime costs.
It could also put Pittsburgh on the leading edge of policing.
Lt. Glennon's 75-man department conducts monthly shooting scenarios that have officers hitting targets while moving through noisy hallways. Such realistic, frequent training is "incredibly rare," he notes.
His department also equips all squad cars with rifles, and has three SUVs packed with extra ammunition, bulletproof shields and other extras for rapid response to active shooters.
Locally, Penn Hills, Plum and Mt. Lebanon already equip patrol officers with rifles, and, to varying extents, train officers to handle active shooters.
That's a trend, said Lt. John Bennett, of the Charleston, Ill. Police Department, a trainer for 16 years and a columnist for PoliceOne.com.
What's driving it? "The fact that a lot of these shootings involve people with rifles."
What's limiting it? "Money's always a big issue. Right after 911, there was a lot of money available for law enforcement. A lot of that has diminished."
Philadelphia, like Pittsburgh, held off on training and equipping all officers to handle an active shooter because it had limited dollars and a SWAT team.
But a year ago, Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski was slain with a high-powered rifle when he tried to stop a bank robbery. That hardened the resolve of new Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, who previously headed Washington, D.C.'s, force, to better arm and train his 6,700 officers.
Since January, 444 Philadelphia officers have learned how to handle an active shooter -- toward a goal of putting every officer through the eight-hour course -- and 175 of those have gotten 40 hours of rifle training.
In Pittsburgh, a review of equipment "is going to be part of the critical review process" that the bureau is conducting to understand and learn from the Stanton Heights shootings, said Assistant Chief Regina McDonald. Pittsburgh City Council has created a committee, led by Public Safety Committee Chairman Bruce Kraus, to work with the bureau and union to find and fund equipment and training.
Mr. O'Hara said the bureau might consider upgrading the Level II body armor officers now wear. That type of vest is concealable, but won't stop high-caliber bullets.
Range Master Harrison noted that a shift to the bulkier Level III vest could prove counterproductive if officers decide it's too uncomfortable to wear.
Mr. O'Hara said more bulletproof shields might be a good investment, as could an armored vehicle tailored to saving a downed officer.
So might a secure system for officer-to-officer communications. Today, he said, officers who don't want their movements to be known to anyone with a police scanner use personal cell phones to coordinate arrests or raids.
Whatever solutions emerge, they will cost money. But there's little choice, since the days when officers can wait for SWAT are over, said Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of the Citizen Police Review Board.
"Our patrol officers can have the equivalent elitism" that SWAT has, she said. "They can respond to anything that the street presents them when there isn't time to wait for SWAT to come."

·A decade after Columbine we're still learning, teaching

Editor's Note: PoliceOne has collected some of the top news reports about the 10-year anniversary of Columbine, which you can access by clicking the image below as well as some of the most popular columns addressing active shooter situations (see the links beneath the image) by PoliceOne contributors, including today's item from Rick Armellino in his return as a regular contributor.

The first officers on the scene had never trained for what they found at Columbine High School: No hostages. No demands. Just killing. Columbine has transformed the way LEOs deal with active shooter situations. Check out PoliceOne's complete coverage of the 10-year anniversary of Columbine by clicking here. (AP Photo)

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I remember sitting in the LETN newsroom ten years ago, scanning the early reports of a terrible shooting in a high school in Colorado. It seemed to me like a Stephen King novel had come to life. What strange demonic forces were at work in the Denver suburb of Littleton? What on Earth was happening?
The news reports were ominous and getting worse every minute as the feeds came in from the reporters. Back then, LETN was a CNN affiliate so our staff was hunkered down, trying to gather facts from speculation, deciding whether on not to go “live” on air.
A year later, I went to Columbine High School (as did hundreds of other people from television stations from around the world) to report in person on the first anniversary of that tragic event. Unlike the other reporters, I was sitting with heroes from the Littleton SWAT team and going over their remarkable story and lessons learned from the paradigm-changing crisis they had endured. Needless to say, the other reporters were not happy when the Littleton Warriors refused to comment to them; they had come to tell their stories to their brothers and sisters in law enforcement.
Today, the story of Columbine has become the seminal event that started us all asking ourselves, "What should we do when there is no negotiation, no time for a Command Post, no time even for a full Tactical Deployment?" Immediately following the tragedy, the debate about the active shooter had begun in earnest and rightfully still does to this day. It is this debate that has sharpened the edge of the law enforcement response, improved the odds of patrol being able to terminate a threat quickly, and lead to a whole new generation of patrol-friendly tactical gear.
Thank this debate for elevating our awareness and preparation. If you have a “go bag,” a patrol carbine or rifle, and training in ad hoc team formation and response to active shooters, thank this debate. The horror of Columbine and all the other acts of violence and inhumanity that have followed (and will continue) should never leave our collective memories. The innocent are our precious concern and their safety and ours depends on our constantly seeking to be better trained, equipped, and prepared for the next time…and there will be next time.
I think of Jeff Chudwin, Al Baker, Ron McCarthy, Bob Weber, John Meyer, and myriad trainers and experts too many to mention in this short essay, who have given their hearts and souls to improving our ability to respond to these horrific events. I am reminded of the administrators who supported their men and women by demanding equipment and providing the training that swept our profession since that heartbreaking plot unfolding ten years ago.
We are not done yet though.
Columbine wasn’t the first, but it was a tipping point that created a firestorm of ideas, solutions, arguments, experiments, and changes. We know law enforcement must be a learning profession, constantly adapting and preparing for the next violent scenario to unfold.
I hope the one lesson you personally learned from the story of Columbine is YOU may hold the key to stopping the next horror. I don’t know what Officer Justin Garner of the Carthage, North Carolina Police Department was thinking when he rushed into a nursing home to stop a rampaging shooter, but I like to think he was responding with the training he had gotten based, in part, on the lessons learned from Columbine.

·        Iraq Says Over 30 Militants Dead in New Strike
·        javno-en, May 5, 2009 1:49 PM
·        insurgency[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: TerroristAttack;
·        Diyala province said, 60 people have been arrested, including three women, and militant safe houses have been identified.

·        Turkish wedding massacre 'carried out by progovernment militia'
·        telegraph, May 5, 2009 1:47 PM
·        massacre[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: TerroristAttack;
·        Gunmen from a progovernment militia are alleged to have been behind the killing of 44 guests at an engagement ceremony in Turkey.

·        FACTBOX-Facts about conflict in Pakistan's Swat
·        alertnet, May 5, 2009 12:38 PM
·        insurgency[2];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: TerroristAttack; Security;
·        05 May 2009 10:09:06 GMT Source: Reuters (For the main story, click on [ID:nISL504647]) May 5 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities urged people on Tuesday in the Swat Valley's main town to leave their homes for safer places as security forces ...

·        Taliban link up with other Pakistani militants (AP)
·        news-yahoo, May 5, 2009 12:33 PM
·        insurgency[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: TerroristAttack; Nuclear;
·        AP - The attackers were local men, drawn from the hot, dusty villages of Punjab province. The mastermind, weapons and guidance for the assault came from the cooler, mountainous northwest — Pakistan's lawless border region with Afghanistan.

·        Q+A-What is Pakistan doing about the Taliban threat?
·        alertnet, May 5, 2009 12:06 PM
·        military action[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: TREN-Security; TerroristAttack;
·        05 May 2009 09:37:31 GMT Source: Reuters (For a related story, click on [ID:nISL504647]) By Zeeshan Haider ISLAMABAD, May 5 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities urged people on Tuesday in the Swat Valley's main town to leave their homes for ...

·        Business.view: Assuming the worst
·        economist, May 5, 2009 1:50 PM
·        attacks[2]; terrorist[1]; death[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: PublicHealth; Energy; CommunicableDiseases; AvianFlu; AgriculturalProdAnimal;
·        The drill was thought to have been the largest and longest of its kind. It involved 70 organisations and lasted six weeks, while simulating the passage of around five months. It found weaknesses in almost all the disaster plans drawn up by financial firms since the attacks of September 11th 2001 and....

·        Al Qaeda exporting jihad with a hip-hop vibe
·        phantis, May 5, 2009 1:31 PM
·        al Qaeda[2]; Al Qaeda[1]; suicide bombings[1]; killing[1]; terrorist[2];
·        . It means "Youth" in Arabic. Somalia "We're seeing perhaps their most sophisticated attempt so far to really reach an audience of potential recruits in America, and that's one of the things that made that video very significant," said Ben Venzke of the IntelCenter, a Washington-based research group that tracks al Qaeda's development and messages.

·        Suicide Bomber Kills 5 in Northwestern Pakistan
·        voanews, May 5, 2009 12:59 PM
·        Suicide Bomber[1]; attack[2]; Kills[1]; killing[1]; suicide bomber[1]; attacking[1];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: Security;
·        Officials say attack happened at checkpoint near Peshawar, at least 21 wounded including children

·        Hillary Clinton’s $900 Million Pledge to Palestinians Will Promote ‘Hate Education,’ Panelists Say
·        bignewsnetwork-palestine, May 5, 2009 12:08 PM
·        suicide bombers[1]; terrorism[2]; attached[1]; terrorists[3]; terrorist[2]; death[2]; killed[2];
·        This article also triggered the following alerts: Development; TAXUD;
·        (CNSNews.com) The almost $1 billon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged as humanitarian and economic development aid for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank in 2009 will also...