ICSVE 6 Extremist Recruitment and Infiltration in LE

ICSVE Research Reports, 2024

Targeted violence and violent extremism are on the rise in the United States and law enforcement personnel, specifically police officers and sheriffs’ deputies, are often the first line of defense in countering targeted violent extremist infiltration and recruitment attempts in their communities (https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022). Law enforcement often have little training to effectively identify and intervene with these new challenges of individuals who are at-risk of radicalization, are being, or have already been radicalized; as well as to protect against community and policing infiltration attempts by violent extremist groups trying to gain access to vulnerable community members and to police training and weapons. The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) is an internationally recognized and respected think tank for their research regarding the processes of radicalization, disengagement, deradicalization, rehabilitation and reintegration; prevention and intervention strategies; counter narrative videos and first-person video recorded interviews of over 800 terrorists and violent extremists. In 2022, ICSVE was awarded a US Department of Homeland Security Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant (Grant No: EMW-2022-GR-00076) to provide a comprehensive, evidence-based series of virtual and in-person multi-media trainings and follow-up briefs addressing law enforcement responses to violent extremism. The goal was for the trainings to be delivered to law enforcement and security professionals across the country and in the Washington, D.C. area to educate and prepare them for a new era of violent extremist radicalization and recruitment. Creative and need-based approaches using multimedia presentations were developed by ICSVE based on actual case studies and research interviews to help police understand the psychosocial forces involved in radicalization to violent extremism, to prevent contributing to radicalization and to analyze psychosocial and policing perspectives on actual case studies of violent extremist events. The trainings took a whole-of-society view, taking into consideration systemic and developmental factors that make individuals highly vulnerable to recruitment, addressed the rise in online indoctrination and recruitment and the obstacles to detection for police and the factors which make exiting difficult for those already in such groups. The project had two main objectives. The first objective was to provide American law enforcement with training and information that can be used to prevent violent extremist infiltration in their communities immediately and the second to provide proof of concept for the future development of a multimedia curriculum which can be disseminated to police and sheriff’s departments across the country and internationally as a virtual and perhaps even an asynchronous continuing education and training program. Activities included developing six multi-media training modules delivered for law enforcement personnel followed by dissemination of related summary notes and research articles to all participants. Pre and post tests were administered, and the results were analyzed to verify that learning objectives were met. Likewise, the researchers collected participants' reviews of the materials, trainers, and suggestions for future trainings. Additionally, 5-10 law enforcement participants from each training group were involved in short interviews to review the trainings, learn what was most useful for police, how to increase their accessibility and suggestions for improvements.

For those who took part in our police trainings over the past two years we have put this policing resource guide on the process of radicalization together for your continued reference. Thank you for taking part in our trainings!

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague (ICCT)

The long-term survival of terrorist organizations relies on their ability to attract new members and maintain an ongoing terrorist recruitment cycle. The numbers of terrorist organization members may decrease due to counterterrorism operations or defections, forcing the leaders of those groups to seek new members. Preventing terrorist recruitment is one of the most effective and least lethal methods of countering terrorism, and yet it is often overlooked by those combating terrorism. Western governments did not stop Al-Qaeda from recouping its losses, even after it suffered devastating losses in the months following the 9/11 attacks. The fact is that Al-Qaeda had only around 400 armed members at the time of 9/11, as opposed to thousands of affiliated members in 2019. Although the recruitment strategies of different organizations may vary, they follow a similar historical pattern. All recruiters must first identify qualified candidates, then establish secure connections, build rapport, indoctrinate them, and slowly pull them into an organization. ISIS proved that this process could be fast-forwarded through online propaganda and social media. Preventing recruitment in the first place can be the most fruitful, and maybe also least expensive, method used to counter terrorism. Successfully short-circuiting the recruitment cycle may save thousands of lives of prospective recruits and many more lives by thwarting future attacks. This chapter aims to present a holistic and comprehensive road map for interrupting and preventing terrorist recruitment by identifying relevant societal factors and triggers that recruiters use to find and control their subjects. https://icct.nl/app/uploads/2021/01/Handbook-Ch-13-Yayla-final.pdf

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Twelve years after the September 11th attacks, countering domestic terrorism remains a top priority for federal law enforcement agencies. Using a variety of reactive and preventive tactics, law enforcement seeks to prevent terrorism before it occurs. Towards that end, community policing developed in the 1990s to combat violent crime in inner city communities is being adopted as a means of collaborating with Muslim communities and local police to combat 'Islamist homegrown terrorism.' Developed in response to paramilitary policing models, community policing is built upon the notion that effective policing requires mutual trust and relationships among local law enforcement and the communities they serve. Thus, traditional community policing is premised on their convergence of interests. While community policing in counterterrorism appears facially sound, this Article proffers that this endeavor is fraught with peril – both for collective civil liberties interests and local police’s interests in preserving relationships of trust. Accordingly, community policing exacerbates, rather than resolves, the underlying subordination of Muslims post-9/11 manifested in preventive counterterrorism policies, notwithstanding the increase of homegrown terrorism threats from non-Muslim groups. The Article asserts three critiques of community policing in counterterrorism: it is more akin to counterradicalization taken from military counterinsurgency strategy than the partnership-based traditional community policing model; to the collective detriment of communities it divides them into 'Good Muslims' willing to cooperate with law enforcement on the federal government’s terms and 'Bad Muslims' who demand a meaningful quid quo pro that ensures protection of Muslim communities’ civil rights and liberties; and it deputizes Muslim leaders to gather and share seemingly innocuous information about their communities that may be used adversely to their collective interests as part of the predominantly prosecution-driven counterterrorism regime. As such, CCP as currently envisioned betrays its rhetoric of empowerment and mutual trust, and is just another weapon in the federal government’s toolkit that perpetuates the 'terrorist other' stereotype. Unless systemic reforms are made to federal preventive counterterrorism strategies, community policing is likely to aggravate existing civil liberties violations and impair otherwise good relations between Muslim communities and local police. Thus, a serious rethinking of proposals to implement community policing in counterterrorism is warranted.

2021

For approximately the past twenty years, the United States (US) government has focused on combating terrorist threats from abroad like Islamic terrorism. However, in recent years, terrorism has transitioned from an external threat to an internal threat. Some people in the US only realized how large a threat white supremacy terror poses to the nation’s security following the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Despite this newly gained knowledge, the threat of white supremacy terror in the US has been growing for years. This study looked at the ways foreign governments have combatted white supremacist terrorism, recruitment, and radicalization methods. Quantitative analysis was performed to assess whether those same tactics would effectively lower the number of attacks related to white supremacy terrorism within the US by combatting recruitment and radicalization efforts. There was insufficient data available to identify correlation between the number of white supremacy...

ICSVE Research Reports, 2023

It is clear that there is limited academic scholarship on violent extremist radicalization among police officers, but news articles and reports by non-profit organizations abound. The present article aims to analyze this work on the aggregate, exploring and highlighting common factors which shed light on the depth and breadth of the problem. The analysis aims to fill the gap in the literature on the particular psychosocial aspects of radicalization and recruitment of active and former police officers. First, we provide a brief overview of the historical context for this problem, discussing the history of American policing and its overlap throughout history with violent extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Next, we turn to recent history, focusing on the last five years (2017-2022) of media reports on police and other law enforcement officers being involved with violent extremist groups. Within those reports, we identified four themes which are subsequently broken down in order to highlight the psychosocial features of each. These four themes are: (1) Law enforcement personnel joining and providing training to violent extremists, (2) violent extremists joining and providing training to law enforcement, (3) violent extremists perceiving law enforcement as supportive of their cause, and (4) law enforcement perceiving violent extremists as non-threatening allies.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, but almost all communities, regardless of ethnicity, religion, social status or location, are now increasingly facing the challenge of terrorist threat. What makes a terrorist organization attractive to some citizens? A better understanding of the reasons why individuals choose to join terror groups may well enhance efforts to disrupt the recruitment process of terrorist organizations and thereby support current and future counter-terrorism initiatives. This book presents the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, 'Countering Terrorist Recruitment in the Context of Armed Counter-Terrorism Operations', held in Antalya, Turkey, in May 2015. The goal of the workshop was to share existing ideas and develop new ones to tackle terrorist recruitment. The book contains 18 articles covering topics which include: the role of NATO and other international entities in counter-terrorism; understanding recruitment methods and socialization techniques of terror networks by comparing them to gangs; social media in terrorist recruitment; drug money links with terrorist financing; and counter-terrorism and human rights. The book will be of interest to all those involved in developing, planning and executing prevention programs and policies in relation to both armed and non-armed counter-terrorism operations.

2003

This paper is expert testimony before a US Senate subcommittee on the subject of terrorist penetration of the US military and prison systems. Presenting the testimony as the product of a research team, Dr Waller found that: (1) Foreign states and movements have been financing the promotion of radical, political Islam, which we call Islamism, within America's armed forces and prisons. (2) That alien ideology, with heavy political overtones, preaches intolerance and hatred of American society, culture, government, and the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. (3) Adherents to that ideology directly and indirectly spawn, train, finance, supply and mobilize terrorists who would destroy our system of government and our way of life. (4) They have created civil support networks for terrorists at home and abroad, providing material assistance, fundraising operations, logistics, propaganda, legal assistance in the event of arrest or imprisonment, and bringing political pressure to bear on policymakers grappling with counterterrorism issues. (5) The Islamists exploited the nation's prison chaplancies and the created the Muslim chaplain cadre in the armed forces as one of several avenues of infiltration, recruitment, training and operation. The FBI witness at the same hearing, John Postale, disputed Dr Waller's findings, but the findings were proven correct.