Attacks trigger new police policy

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on Sept. 14, 2011. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 revealed not only national and international policing weaknesses, but also those at the local level.

After 3,000 people died on the opposite side of the country, law enforcement agencies across America updated their procedures to respond to future attacks.

"It affected the psyche," district Police Services Chief Charles Gibson said. "It had a profound impact on the community and nation as a whole."

Colleges were seen as a safe haven until the attacks 10 years ago, he said.

"Gangs, terrorism, everybody else wouldn't mess with college campuses," he said. "After 9/11, we felt vulnerable."

Campuses became what Gibson called soft targets, which have large numbers of people in a generally small area.

"Since 9/11 we began to increase on the amount of other sorts of training," district Lt. Chad Wehrmeister said. "Our officers trained in recognizing terrorist activity.

"One thing we learned post-9/11 was that terrorist activity can and does in fact happen in our country," he said. "When you have a situation, whether it is the Oklahoma City bombing or New York City with the Twin Towers, there is a municipal agency responsible at the local level.

"These agencies have to train to respond to this type of thing," he said.

Contra Costa College administration of justice department Chairperson Rick Ramos said police officers are taught to connect bits of evidence, like GPS directions and maps, and draw a conclusion quickly about the possibility of a terror suspect.

"When you have one plus two plus three and it adds up to six, know that," he said. "Be aware of what can possibly happen."

A lesson learned after Sept. 11 was the inability for different agencies to communicate with one another, Wehrmeister said.

"The quality (of communication) has improved in the last 10 years to be able to be in contact with agencies at the federal and state level," he said.

Since 2002, all officers in the district need to refresh on perishable skills: safety and policy procedures regarding traffic stops, arrests and critical incidents.

As a result of the Sept. 11 attacks and domestic terrorism attacks, including the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 and the Ft. Hood shooting in Texas in November 2009, the district added to its police force an emergency preparedness officer and a terror liaison. Neither Teddy Terstegge nor Tom Holt returned calls requesting interviews.

Ramos said the two lone shooters in those incidents, Seung-Hui Cho and Nidal Malik Hasan, changed how departments train for active shooters.

He said before those gunmen killed 32 and 13 people, respectively, police would surround, barricade and wait for them to give themselves up or for a tactical team to strategize a solution.

Now, however, waiting costs lives.

"If you wait, they'll kill a bunch of people," Ramos said.