June 7, 2026: Local police are the first line of defense against Islamic terrorists, espionage and much more. For example, when police in a suburban community conduct a nighttime check of a local park, they will sometimes find a vehicle that has no reason to be there. Upon further inspection police often find criminal behavior, as well as bulk illegal drug shipments and weapons

The DHS/Department of Homeland Security has found that their most effective allies are local police. They are often the ones to discover criminal, espionage or worse activity that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unaware of, or knew that it existed and little else. Another example was the Chinese efforts to conduct espionage under the guise of Chinese tourists seeing the sights and taking pictures. It was local security personnel who connected the dots and reported that these Chinese tourists always spent a lot of time around military bases and took a lot of photos. Many of these photos caught details the Chinese could not obtain from satellite photos.

It’s not that these problems were ignored. Sixteen years ago, the SAR/Suspicious Activity Reporting system, DHS/FBI fusion centers, BI/Business Intelligence and corporate security as well as a new generation of AI/Artificial Intelligence powered systems enabled masses of surveillance data and phones in tips to be analyzed and report important security problems, or opportunities in near-real time. The Nationwide SAR system connects local police to fusion centers through standardized reporting. The problem is that its reporting criteria filter is optimized to detect Islamic terrorists. Anything else is ignored. Many local and national security officials would like to see SAR pay attention to more of the suspicious activity and send pertinent local items back to local police.

There are already examples of how this can work. Since September 11, 2001, NYC/New York City established a substantial terrorism intelligence operation. This included sending investigators and analysts overseas. Back home, NYC police set up databases of terror related information collected locally, and obtained from the FBI, CIA and other sources. The police also established informant networks among the Moslem community.

After 9/11 there was a publicity campaign for a terrorist hotline, using ads with the tagline; “If you see something, say something.” In the first few years after that over a thousand and, in one case 2,000, tips came in annually. Some of these tips led to arrests of criminals and a few involved terrorist activity. The information that did not lead to an immediate action were added to databases. Some of the people providing the tips were recruited as CIs/Confidential Informants so they regularly report what they saw. For local regular police work, CIs are an essential asset for detecting criminal activity and arresting specific criminals.