IACP2014: FBI Director Talks About Threats to Law Enforcement

Oct. 28, 2014
FBI Director James Comey spoke to attendees during the First General Assembly in Orlando, Fla.

After a little over a year, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation says he has had to learn on the job and adapt to drastic changes occurring in the U.S. and abroad.

FBI Director James Comey, who was sworn in last September, spoke to attendees at the First General Assembly Monday at IACP 2014 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando Fla. about the importance of partnerships between local and government L.E. agencies, the ever-changing landscape of terrorism, investigations and threats to police.

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Comey addressed the troubling trend of law enforcement officers being targeted. On Sept. 12, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Bryon Dickson died after he and Trooper Alex Douglass were ambushed. The suspect, Eric Frein, is still being hunted a month later.

"Our paramount wish as leaders of law enforcement is that our people come home after each tour," he said. "Recently we have seen in the United States a disturbing increase in shootings and ambush-style attacks against law enforcement officers."

Year-to-date, 41 U.S. law enforcement officers have been slain by assailants with firearms. It's a 64 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Six of those officers killed died in ambush-style attacks.

"Attacks like these on law enforcement are not a matter of abstract statistics for me, and I know they are not for you," Comey said.

Public Perception

While the threat against police is growing, so is the public debate over of police use-of-force and military surplus equipment used by L.E. agencies across the country.

"I know that this debate and some of the bumper-stickering of it has discouraged many of you, because you know in your gut the dangers that your folks face when they put on the uniform and the badge to go out and do their job each day," he said.

One thing law enforcement officers can do to circumvent this issue, the director noted, is to engage with residents and explain their work and why certain equipment is needed.

"It's very important to remind our citizens that we all tell a lie to our children," he said. "I have five children, and all five of them have woken up during the night afraid of monsters. So, I lied to them and I told them that monsters aren't real. Monsters are real. Monsters are barricaded inside apartments waiting for law enforcement to respond so that they can fire rounds that will pierce ballistic vests. Monsters are real, and they are equipped with equipment designed to harm innocent people and good men like Trooper Dickson.

"We need a range of weapons and equipment to respond and protect our fellow citizens and protect ourselves," he said. "That equipment is never meant for offense. It is meant to give our officers the best possible chance to survive. It is meant to help us bring bad people to justice."

Comey said that for him, the issue isn't the equipment law enforcement officers have at their disposal, but how, and when, it is used.

"The real issue for me is the way in which we use it and how we deploy advanced equipment and when and how our officers are trained to use that equipment. The way we do it matters enormously," he said, stressing that in the age of social media, images and perceptions can dominate public discourse. "That requires us to be aware how we might be perceived by those who may not know our work and the threats of it as much as we do."

'Going Dark'

Comey spoke about a phenomenon that has been around since the 1990s in which it became increasingly difficult for those with lawful authority and court order to be able to collect communications in progress. At the time, the notion of 'going dark' was mostly limited to telephone calls, but was there an increase in communication through text messages and email.

"What's happened over the last 20 years is that the proliferation of modes of communication has made that problem and order of magnitude worse," he said. "Under lawful authority, we increasingly find ourselves simply unable to do that which the courts have authorized us to do, and that is collect information being transmitted by terrorists, by criminals, by pedophiles, by bad people of all sorts."

Because of this, law enforcement personnel has been unable to intercept data in motion and over the last few years the issue has only grown worse and has now spread to data in rest. Just this month, announcements were made by Apple and Google that encryption will be the default in their new smartphone operating systems.

"That to me was a very surprising and worrisome development," Comey said. "My hope is that before we get to a place in this country where we market trunks of cars that cannot be opened, closets that can never be opened or smartphones that can never, never be opened, that we have a conversation."

Changing Landscape of Terrorism

Comey spoke about the constant change and evolution of domestic and global terrorism and how law enforcement must take past events into consideration in order to prevent future tragedies.

"There will come a terrorist diaspora out of places like Syria and Iraq," he said. "Those of us who are old enough to remember, can remember the terrorist diaspora out of Afghanistan after the war with the soviets and can draw a line from that diaspora to 9/11."

In order to combat this threat, he said that law enforcement officials must focus on the traveler phenomenon in which U.S. citizens may radicalize, travel overseas to join terrorist organizations and return to their communities as violent extremists.

He said that the notion of homegrown violent extremists was unknown to him back in 2004, but since has become a domestic threat that need to be taken seriously by law enforcement officials.

"These homegrown violent extremists are folks who are also seeking some sort of meaning in a misguided way in their lives, and then may never actually meet a member of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or ISIL, but the internet has made it possible for them getting all of the poison they need to radicalize themselves and the information they need to engage in practical acts or horrific violence in their basement, in their pajamas," he said. "These homegrown violent extremists are able to train and radicalize in private, and then emerge to do terrible things to innocent people."

Since there is virtually nothing that the FBI does on its own, Comey said that the agency relies on local law enforcement to be the ones who spot the warning signs in their communities.

"It is highly unlikely to be a special agent for the FBI who first sees a traveler talking about going or a traveler who has returned to a neighborhood and escaped us at the border," he said. "It is also highly unlikely for it to be a federal agent who sees or hear about in a neighborhood, some troubled soul who appears to be radicalizing on the internet. It is far more likely to be a police officer on patrol or a deputy sheriff, somebody who knows that neighborhood."

The relationships between local and federal law enforcement agencies are more important now they have ever been, and the director vowed to keep open the lines of communication and continued to attend, as well as send members of his staff, to the annual IACP convention.

"It is all the more important that we, as people who are responsible for securing this country, remain tightly connected to each other," he said. "I thank you for your commitment for our joint terrorism task forces and to the fusion centers -- which are the embodiment of that cooperation."

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