Surveying American state police agencies about terrorism threats, terrorism sources, and terrorism definitions

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 450-475

  Freilich, Joshua D ^a   Chermak, Steven M ^b   Simone Jr , Joseph ^c  

^a JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE   (United States)

^b MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449632670     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: 15561836     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550902950324     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. We operationalize political extremists as individuals who (1) subscribe to a belief system that endorses a political, economic, religious, or social goal, and believe that (2) the American government and/or society is evil and corrupt, and poses a threat to their group and/or cause, and as a result (3) illegal behaviors including violence against the American government and/or society are necessary.
2. See Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, Introducing the Global Terrorism Database, Terrorism and Political Violence 19 (2007): 181-204.
3. Steven M. Chermak, Searching for a Demon: The Media Construction of the Militia Movement (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002);
4. Joshua D. Freilich, Nelson Pichardo-Almanzar, and Craig J. Rivera, How Social Movement Organizations Explicitlyand Implicitly Promote Deviant Behavior: The Case of the Militia Movement, Justice Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1999): 655-683.
5. Gary LaFree, Laura Dugan, Heather Fogg, and Jeffery Scott, Building a Global Terrorism Database (Final Report to the National Institute of Justice, May 2006).
6. Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to Al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003);
7. see also LaFree and Dugan (see note 1 above) and Brent L. Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (Albany: State University of New York, 1994).
8. Hewitt (see note 4 above) used the Federal Bureau of Investigation's terrorism definition;
9. see Federal Bureau of Investigation, Terrorism in the United States: 1997 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), which defines terrorism as the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
10. Joshua D. Freilich and Steven M. Chermak, United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), 1990-2008: Preliminary results. Department of Homeland Security University Network Research and Education Summit. Washington, D.C. (March 2009);
11. see also Joshua D. Freilich, Steven M. Chermak, and David Caspi. Critical Events in the Life Trajectories of Domestic Extremist Groups: A Case Study Analysis of Four Violent White Supremacist Groups, forthcoming in Criminology and Public Policy 8, no 3 (2009);
12. Jeffrey Gruenewald, Joshua D. Freilich and Steven M. Chermak, An Overview of The Domestic Far-Right and its Criminal Activities, in Barbara Perry and Randy Blazak. eds., Hate Crime: Issues and Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 2009).
13. Defining the domestic far right is not easy because there is no universally accepted definition and prior research has not sufficiently addressed this issue. Drawing upon a systematic review of studies Gruenewald, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 6 above) published on far-right extremism in general and its association with political crimes in particular, including important works that offered typologies, definitions, and descriptions
14. see, for example Michael Barkun, Millenarian Aspects of White Supremacist Movements, Terrorism and Political Violence 1, no. 4 (1989): 409-434;
15. Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: The Guilford Press, 2000);
16. James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987);
17. James E. Duffy and Alan C. Brantley, Militias: Initiating Contact, Federal Bureau of Investigation (1997). Retrieved November 18, 1998 from: http:/?www.fbi.gov/library/leb/1997/July975.htm;
18. Martin Durham, The American Far Right and 9/11, Terrorism and Political Violence 15 (2003): 96-111;
19. Jeffrey Kaplan, The Context of American Millenarian Revolutionary Theology: The Case of the 'Identity Christian' Church of Israel, Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no.1 (1993): 30-82;
20. Jeffrey Kaplan, Right Wing Violence in North America, Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 1 (1995): 44-95;
21. George Michael, The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006);
22. Wayman C. Mullins, Terrorist Organizations in the United States (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Books, 1988);
23. Smith (see note 4 above);
24. Ehud Sprinzak, Right Wing Terrorism in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of Split Delegitimization, Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no.1 (1995): 17-43;
25. see also Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile, White Power, White Pride! The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997)
26. Leonard Weinberg, The American Radical Right: Exit, Voice, and Violence in P. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg, eds., Encounters with the Contemporary Radical Right (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), 185-203.
27. We rely upon the following description. The domestic far right is composed of individuals or groups that subscribe to aspects of the following ideals: they are fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty (especially their right to own guns, be free of taxes), believe in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty and a belief that one's personal and/or national way of life is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (sometimes such beliefs are amorphous and vague, but for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations, training and survivalism. It is important to note that mainstream conservative movements and the mainstream Christian right are not included.
28. Brent L. Smith and Kelly R. Damphousse, The Life Course of American Eco-Terrorists: Informal and Formal Organizations, forthcoming in Criminology and Public Policy 8, no. 3 (2009).
29. Jack K. Riley and Bruce Hoffman, Domestic Terrorism: A National Assessment of State and Local Preparedness (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1995).
30. Smith and Damphousse (see note 8 above).
31. Joseph R. Carlson, The Future Terrorists in America, American Journal of Police 14, nos. 3/4 (1995): 71-91.
32. Ronald V. Clarke and Graeme R. Newman, Outsmarting the Terrorists (New York: Praeger Security International, 2006);
33. Mark S. Hamm, Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al Qaeda and Beyond (New York: New York University Press, 2007);
34. Edmund F. McGarrell, Joshua D. Freilich, and Steven M. Chermak, Intelligence-led Policing as a Framework for Responding to Terrorism, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23, no. 2 (2007): 142-158;
35. Graeme R. Newman and Ronald V. Clarke, Policing Terrorism: An Executive's Guide Washington (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2008).
36. Marc C. Anarumo, What are We Really Afraid of? The Practitioner's View of the Terrorist Threat in the United States (PhD Dissertation. Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, 2005);
37. Clarke and Newman (see note 12 above); Hamm (see note 12 above);
38. McGarrell, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 12 above); Newman and Clarke (see note 12 above).
39. Brent L. Smith, Kelly R. Damphousse, and Paxton Roberts, Pre-incident Indicators of Terrorist activities (Final Report to the National Institute of Justice for award #2003-DT-CX-0003, 2006);
40. Brent L. Smith, Jack Cothren, Paxton Roberts, and Kelly R. Damphousse, Geospatial Analysis of Terrorist Activities: The Identification of Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Behavior of International and Environmental Terrorists (Final Report to the National Institute of Justice for award #2005-IJ-CX-0200, 2008).
41. Hamm (see note 12 above).
42. Anarumo 4 (see note 13 above).
43. Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich, and Zachary Shemtob, Law Enforcement Training and the Domestic Far-right, Forthcoming in Criminal Justice and Behavior (2009);
44. Freilich and Chermak (see note 6 above); Gruenewald, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 6 above);
45. Hamm (see note 12 above); McGarrell, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 12 above); Newman and Clarke (see note 12 above).
46. Chermak, Freilich, and Shemtob (see note 17 above).
47. Jack P. Gibbs, Conceptualization of Terrorism, American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 329-340;
48. Andrew Silke, Terrorism and the Blind Men's Elephant, Terrorism and Political Violence 8, no. 3 (1996): 12-28;
49. Austin Turk, Political Criminality: The Defiance and Defense of Authority (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982);
50. Robert White, On Measuring Political Violence: Northern Ireland, 1969 to 1980, American Sociological Review 58, no. 4 (1993): 575-585.
51. Martha Crenshaw, Counterterrorism Policy and the Political Process, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24, no. 5 (2001): 329-337;
52. Martha Crenshaw, Terrorism in Context (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995);
53. Martha Crenshaw How Terrorism Declines, Terrorism and Political Violence 3, no. 1 (1991): 69.
54. Carlson (see note 11 above).
55. Riley and Hoffman (see note 9 above).
56. Davis, Lois M., K. Jack Riley, Greg Ridgeway, Jennifer Pace, Sarah K. Cotton, Paul S. Steinberg, Kelly Damphousse, and Brent L. Smith, When Terrorism Hits Home: How Prepared Are State and Local Law Enforcement? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2004);
57. K. Riley, Gregory F. Treverton, Jeremy M. Wilson and Lois M. Davis, State and local intelligence in the war on terrorism (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2005).
58. Davis et al. (see note 23 above).
59. Riley, Treverton, Wilson, and Davis (see note 23 above).
60. Riley, Treverton, Wilson, and Davis (see note 23 above)
61. Riley, Treverton, Wilson, and Davis (see note 23 above), p. 9.
62. Sharon E. Chamard, Innovation-Diffusion Networks and the Adoption and Discontinuance of Computerized Crime Mapping by Municipal Police Departments in New Jersey (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2003);
63. Newman and Clarke (see note 12 above);
64. Aki Roberts and John M. Roberts, Police Innovations and the Structure of Informal Communication Between Police Agencies: Network and LEMAS Data (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 2006);
65. Alexander Weiss, Informal Information Sharing Among Police Agencies (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 1998).
66. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Available from the WWW at http://www.9-11commission.gov/, 2004, 417.
67. General Accounting Office, Efforts to Improve Information Sharing Need to be Strengthened (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, 2003);
68. General Accounting Office, Numerous Federal Networks used to Support Homeland Security Need to be Better Coordinated with Key State and Local Information Sharing Initiatives (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, 2007);
69. The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Available on the WWW at http://www.wmd.gov/report/, 2005.
70. See Program Manager, Information Sharing Implementation Plan, Information Sharing Implementation Plan, available from the WWW at www.ise.gov/docs/ISE-impplan-200611.pdf, 2006, xiv.
71. Laura Dugan, Gary LaFree, and Alex P. Piquero, Testing a Rational Choice Model of Airline Hijackings, Criminology 43, no. 4 (2005): 1031-1065;
72. Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, How does studying terrorism compare to studying crime? In M. Deflem, ed., Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance, Volume 5: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Criminological Perspectives (Amsterdam: Elsevier, JAI, 2004), 53-74;
73. Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, The Quantitative Analysis of Terrorism and Immigration: An Initial Exploration, Terrorism and Political Violence 18 (2006): 503-521.
74. Graeme R. Newman, Reducing Terrorist Opportunities: A Framework for Foreign Policy, in Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman, Guest eds., Countering Terrorism Through Situational Crime Prevention (Forthcoming in Crime Prevention Studies, 26, Monsey: Criminal Justice Press, 2009).
75. Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. New York City Police Department Intelligence Division. Available from the WWW at http://www.nypdshield.org/public/SiteFiles/documents/NYPD_Report-Radical ization_in_the_West.pdf, 2006).
76. David F. Noble, Assessing the Reliability of Open Source Information. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Information Fusion (Stockholm, Sweden), 2004. Available from the WWW at www.fusion2004.foi.se/papers/IF04-1172.pdf.
77. Bruce Hoffman and David Claridge, The RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism and Noteworthy Domestic Incidents, 1996, Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no. 2 (1998): 135-180; Riley and Hoffman (see note 9 above).
78. N. J. Perry, The Numerous Federal Legal Definitions of Terrorism: The Problem of Too Many Grails, Journal of Legislation 30 (2004): 249-274;
79. Silke (see note 18 above);
80. Leonard Weinberg, Amy Pedahzur, and S. Hirsch-Hoefler, The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 4 (2004): 777-794.
81. Alex Schmid and A. Jongman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories and Literature (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1988).
82. Weinberg, Pedahzur, and Hirsch-Hoefler (see note 37 above).
83. The 22 definitional elements include: (1) Violence, force, (2) political, (3) Fear, terror emphasized, (4) Threat, (5) Psychological effects & (anticipated) reactions, (6) Victim-target differentiation, (7) Purposive, planned, systematic, organized action, (8) Method of combat, strategy, tactic, (9) Extranormality, in breach of accepted rules, without humanitarian constraints, (10) Coercion, extortion, induction of compliance, (11) Publicity aspect, (12) Arbitrariness, impersonal, random character, indiscrimination, (13) Civilians, noncombatants, neutrals, outsiders as victims, (14) Intimidation, (15) Innocence of victims emphasized, (16) Group, movement, organization as perpetrator, (17) symbolic aspect, demonstration to others, (18) Incalculability, unpredictability, unexpectedness of occurrence of violence, (19) Clandestine, covert nature, (20) Repetitiveness, serial or campaign character of violence, (21) Criminal, (22) Demands made on third parties.
84. Schmid and Jongman (see note 38 above).
85. Weinberg, Pedahzur, and Hirsch-Hoefler (see note 37 above).
86. Weinberg, Pedahzur, and Hirsch-Hoefler (see note 37 above).
87. Schmid and Jongman (see note 38 above).
88. Schmid and Jongman (see note 38 above).
89. Schmid and Jongman (see note 38 above).
90. Federal Bureau of Investigation (see note 5 above).
91. The findings below are derived from completed surveys of the state police agencies. Agencies were informed that the researchers would not reveal data from specific states. In addition, institutional review boards granted approval for the project on the condition that data from individual named states not be revealed. As such, no state names are identified in these findings.
92. Carlson (see note 11 above).
93. Davis et al.; Riley, Treverton, Wilson, and Davis (see note 23 above).
94. Gruenewald, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 6 above).
95. Barkun (see note 7 above);
96. Berlet and Lyons (see note 7 above);
97. Durham (see note 7 above);
98. Kaplan (see note 7 above);
99. Mullins (see note 7 above);
100. Weinberg (see note 7 above).
101. Chermak (see note 2 above);
102. Joshua D. Freilich, American Militias: State-level Variations in Militia Activities (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2003);
103. Joshua D. Freilich and William Alex Pridemore, A Reassessment of State-level Covariates of Militia Groups, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23, no. 4 (2005): 527-546.
104. Chermak (see note 2 above);
105. Joshua D. Freilich and William Alex Pridemore, Mismeasuring militias: Limitations of advocacy group data and of state-level studies of paramilitary groups, Justice Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2006): 147-162.
106. Carlson (see note 11 above).
107. Carlson (see note 11 above)
108. Carlson (see note 11 above).
109. See also Anarumo (see note 13 above), 159.
110. Anarumo (see note 13 above);
111. Caspi, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 6 above);
112. Marc Sageman, Leaderless Resistance: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
113. Smith (see note 4 above).
114. See, e.g., Freilich, Chermak, and Caspi (see note 6 above);
115. Freilich and Chermak (see note 6 above);
116. Hamm (see note 12 above);
117. LaFree and Dugan (see note 1 above);
118. Smith and Damphousse (see note 8 above).
119. Freilich (see note 53 above); Freilich and Pridemore (see note 53 above);
120. Sean P. O'Brien and Donald P. Haider-Markel, Fueling the Fire: Social and Political Correlates of Citizen Militia Activity, Social Science Quarterly 79, no. 2 (1998): 456-465;
121. Nella Van Dyke and S. A. Soule, Structural Social Change and the Mobilizing Effect of Threat: Examining Levels of Patriot and Militia Organizing in the United States, Social Problems 49, no. 4 (2002): 497-520.
122. Chermak (see note 2 above); Freilich and Pridemore (see note 54 above);
123. Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far-Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
124. See also Anarumo (see note 13 above), 70.
125. Anarumo (see note 13 above);
126. Freilich and Chermak (see note 6 above);
127. Gruenewald, Freilich, and Chermak (see note 6 above).
128. Roberta Belli and Joshua D. Freilich, Situational Crime Prevention and Crimes of Omission: A Soft Approach Against Ideologically Motivated Tax-Refusal, in Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman, Guest eds. Countering terrorism through situational crime prevention (Forthcoming in Crime Prevention Studies, 26, Monsey: Criminal Justice Press, 2009).
129. Chermak (see note 2 above);
130. Steven M. Chermak and Jeffrey Gruenewald, The Media's Coverage of Domestic Terrorism, Justice Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2006): 428-461.
131. Nadine Gurr and Benjamin Cole, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2002);
132. Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
133. Anarumo (see note 13 above).
134. Chermak (see note 2 above);
135. Freilich and Pridemore (see note 6 above).
136. Anarumo (see note 13 above).