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This is a copy of a paper published in Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Volume 1, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2012.
Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2012. "Joint Terrorism Task Forces." Pp. 423-426 in Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Volume 1, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.
Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are cooperative counterterrorism forces consisting of officers drawn from multiple police and security agencies. They constitute the most central law enforcement means by which terrorist activities are investigated in the United States. JTTFs are organized and managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the primary U.S. law enforcement organization responsible for counterterrorism cases, but they are comprised of officers from many different law enforcement agencies, including other federal police and security agencies (such as the US Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], and Customs and Border Protection [CBP]), regional law enforcement agencies (including state and municipal police agencies), as well as other first-responder organizations.
Joint
Terrorism Task Forces engage in all aspects of a counterterrorism
investigation, including following up on information and leads, the gathering
of evidence, the collection of intelligence, and the making of arrests. JTTFs
thus seek to fulfill reactive objectives to
respond to and investigate terrorist cases as well as be pro-actively engaged
in counterterrorism efforts by seeking to deter and prevent terrorist activity.
Additionally, JTTFs
provide security at special events, such as mass sports gatherings, and organize
counterterrorism training for law enforcement personnel. Presently, there are
about 100 JTTFs operating across the territory of the United States, with at
least one Task Force in each FBI field office. These various JTTFs are locally
organized and coordinate their respective efforts through a National Joint
Terrorism Task Force that is located at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.
In total, almost 4,000 officers are working in JTTFs, with a little over half
of those coming from the FBI itself.
Joint
Terrorism Task Forces exemplify the centrality that is accorded to inter-agency
cooperation in the organization of counterterrorism police work in the United
States. At the governmental level, the emphasis on cooperation is demonstrated
by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which brings together a
multitude of counterterrorism and security agencies. At the level of police,
cooperation is articulated in various inter-agency partnerships, such as the
Border Enforcement Security Task Forces (BEST) under the direction of ICE, the
Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBET) under the supervision of CBP, and
the FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The first JTTF was set up in New York
City in 1980 in response to domestic terrorism coming from ethnic-nationalist
groups. This first, small Task Force consisted of some eleven FBI special agents
and eleven detectives
from the New York City
Police Department. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, the strategy of employing JTTFs was considerably expanded.
No less than 65 (of 100) Task Forces have been created after the events of
9/11.
The
main advantage of the JTTF, from the viewpoint of the FBI, is that it serves as
a so-called ‘force-multiplier’ because many of the agents in a JTTF are
recruited from other agencies, yet work in function of FBI objectives. Thus,
the FBI has been able to alleviate some of the budgetary and personnel
pressures that had been placed on the Bureau by the massive re-assignment of
its special agents to terrorism cases after the events of September 11. The
JTTF is for the FBI primarily a cost-efficient structure of cooperation. From
an operational viewpoint, moreover, the JTTFs can facilitate communication
exchange among various agencies and they provide integrated enforcement of
terrorism investigations. Among police officials, these advantages are conceived
of in terms of an objective of ‘fusion,’ whereby counterterrorist intelligence can be shared vertically from the FBI’s
central headquarters to the various local JTTFs as well as horizontally across
all participating agencies. It
is to be noted that inter-agency police partnerships such as the JTTF are
practical arrangements that are independently created by law enforcement
agencies outside the context of legal regulations and irrespective of any political
considerations.
Affecting
the success of JTTF activities, the centrality of cooperation is not always
evenly recognized across law enforcement agencies, especially not among local police
organizations which may emphasize other concerns besides terrorism. Most
striking in this respect has been the decision to withdraw the local police
from participation in a Joint Terrorism Task Force that had been set up in
Portland, Oregon in the wake of September 11. Among certain community groups in
the city, concerns had been raised about the purported overly broad
surveillance powers that would be accorded to municipal police officers through
participation in the FBI-managed Joint Terrorism Task Force. Furthermore, it
was alleged that that local officials would not be able to overlook the
activities of the city police agents when they would be cooperating with the
FBI. These concerns were amplified after FBI agents had arrested seven Muslim
Americans in the Portland area in October 2002 and April 2003. The arrests, now
known as the case of the ‘Portland Seven,’ angered not only Islamic leaders in
the local Oregonian community but also fueled anxieties about the potential of
counterterrorism law enforcement
police efforts potentially violating civil rights and relying on
problematic surveillance methods, such as racial profiling tactics. In 2005,
then newly elected mayor Tom Potter eventually led a successful effort to
withdraw the Portland Police Bureau’s participation from the JTTF. Despite such
occasional criticisms and obstacles, however, the Join Terrorism Task Force
remains the primary structure through which U.S. police investigate terrorist
activity in the United States.
Bibliography
Deflem, Mathieu. The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global
Perspectives.
New York: Routledge, 2010.
Erickson, Kris, John Carr, and Steve Herbert. “The Scales of
Justice: Federal-Local Tensions in the War on Terror.” Pp. 231-253 in Uniform Behavior: Police Localism and
National Politics, edited by S.K. McGoldrick and A. McArdle.
Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006.
Herman, Susan N. “Collapsing Spheres: Joint Terrorism Task
Forces, Federalism, and the War On Terror.” Willamette Law Review 41 (2005): 941-969.
Murphy,
Gerard R. and Martha R. Plotkin. Protecting Your Community from Terrorism. Improving Local-Federal Partnerships.
Vol. 1: Improving Local-Federal Partnerships. Washington, DC:
Police Executive Research Forum, 2003.
See related writings on terrorism and police.
See related writings on terrorism and police.
