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Today's Wall Street Journal front page says that in breaking up an international car theft ring recently, the LAPD interrupted the flow of profits to terrorists in the Republic of Georgia. It's in a piece on how the LAPD and other departments are doing their part to deter terrorism.
On Feb. 15, 2006, the LAPD busted eight people for fraud in connection with the alleged scam and issued arrest warrants for 11 others. Chechen terrorist financing was never mentioned in the indictments or in the press release that trumpeted the takedown of the operation. There were no news conferences claiming victory in the war on terror. Yet Russian police, U.S. intelligence and State Department officials familiar with the case today all say that they believe the LAPD's breakup of the ring was a setback to international terrorists....Los Angeles has created one of the most active counterterrorist police departments in the country, often reacting to overseas attacks with its own contingency planning....The Los Angeles police's low-key strategy is to use local laws -- from parking ordinances to antifraud statutes -- to crack down on suspected terrorists. It's akin to the tactic the federal government used in the 1930s when going after gangster Al Capone: He was indicted for tax evasion instead of murder.
Los Angeles police say that since 9/11 they have arrested nearly 200 people, both American citizens and foreign nationals, with suspected ties to terrorist organizations. These included a group of North Africans that LAPD and federal officials are convinced were part of an al Qaeda support cell living in Los Angeles. The charges against them have ranged from marriage fraud to identity theft to illegal weapons possession.
Each arrest was the result of a conventional criminal investigation using California state law with no need for warrantless phone taps or secret court orders. None of the cases ever mentioned terrorism at all. Trials are still pending in many cases but there have been dozens of guilty pleas. In some cases, suspected foreign terrorists arrested on fraud charges have been scooped up by federal agents and deported on separate federal immigration charges before their criminal trials got under way.
At a time when the FBI and other Washington agencies are coming under growing criticism for terrorism cases that often fall apart in the courts, the Los Angeles police approach using conventional crime cases is gaining attention as an alternative.
"What the LAPD is doing with a straightforward crimes approach is upholding the integrity of the justice system and showing that when used correctly it is powerful and effective," says Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University's Center on Law and Security.
The piece focuses on detective Mark Severino, who gets a nice WSJ pencil drawing for his wall. Chief Bratton explains the department's approach and replies to fears of potential abuse by the LAPD — which used to spy on liberals and even kept notes on Mayor Tom Bradley's political activities:
Hamid Khan, the executive director of the South Asian Network, a local civil-rights group representing many Islamic community groups, says that many Muslims are fearful of the LAPD's reputation for excessive force and view much of its policing efforts in Muslim migrant areas of the city as insensitive.Shiu-Ming Cheer, a community activist with the South Asian Network, says that she was aware of two cases in which Muslim women called the police to report domestic abuse only to be ridiculed by the responding officers. "The women said the police told them: 'Isn't wife beating part of your culture? Why are you bothering us?' "
LAPD officials say they are mindful of the concerns of ethnic groups and sensitive about collecting intelligence about people who might not be directly related to a crime under investigation. At the same time, however, the force is pushing state officials for permission to retain information on suspected terrorist cases for longer than the 12-month limit currently imposed by state law. The LAPD's approach to counterterrorism has its roots in the policing model known as "No Broken Windows." Under this approach, police actively move against small crimes and in the process find out information about bigger crimes. Subway turnstile jumpers in New York, for instance, have often been found to be purse snatchers or drug runners, and their arrests have in some cases led to information about much more aggressive street crimes.
The method was pioneered by LAPD's chief of police, William Bratton, when he served more than a decade ago as the commissioner of the New York Police Department. It was one of the strategies he brought with him when he took over as the Los Angeles police chief in October 2002, inheriting a department beset by soaring crime and steeped in scandal and racial tension.
Chief Bratton reorganized the department and took hundreds of cops out of administrative jobs and put them on the streets. He then began strictly enforcing quality-of-life crimes, going after graffiti vandals, purse snatchers and prostitutes, figuring that stopping small crimes creates a less criminal-friendly environment. With more than 650 murders in 2002, Los Angeles had more homicides in that year than any other city in the nation. A year later, the murder rate was down almost 25% and overall crime was down by more than 4%.
Now, Chief Bratton is adapting the same model to terrorism, calling it intelligence-led policing. "Where as once we would have caught a robber red-handed and that would have been enough to satisfy the legal case, we now have to stop and ask ourselves, who is this robber?" Chief Bratton explains. "Is he stealing to feed a drug habit? OK, who is he buying his drugs from? Or is he robbing to raise funds to buy guns for a gang? Which gang? Who are his associates? Or is he part of organized crime or something else? The aim is to drill down into crime to get a complete picture of the crime landscape in your community."