Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

Every generation seems to have a moment they will remember forever, what they were doing or where they were when they heard the news. For my parents, it was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With my birth cohort, it was the assassination of JFK. For our children, it was the Challenger blowing up. And for anyone ten or more years old today, it will be the second they heard that terrorists had flown airliners into the World Trade Center.

That event united the country as much as the Pearl Harbor attack did, and for many of the same reasons. We are unaccustomed to being attacked on our own soil. We have always taken the fight to the aggressor. And to have the attack take place on the commerce capital of the country, if not the world, was unthinkable. I doubt if Osama and his merry men even considered how the infidel would become so unified against them by striking as they did.

We had come a long way since my high school and college days. Then, popular opinion dictated that anyone that was in the military joined because they had no choice, or they were too stupid, unambitious, or criminally insane to know how wrong it was. Only crackpots waved the flag or wore their American Legion or VFW caps. By the time Desert Storm came around in 1991, it was again fashionable to be patriotic. Even Jane Fonda was keeping her counsel by then. Cops were still on the fringe, though. People still didn’t like us much. On September 11th, everything changed. Cops and firefighters (well, everyone has always loved the firemen, anyway) got elevated to the same pedestal as the military members. People came to appreciate that the donut eaters and hose draggers have their moments, too. Too bad that 3000+ people had to die to bring that about.

Up until September 11th, 2001, Community Policing was the cash cow for law enforcement. You could get money for a 747 if you could find a way to hang a community policing label on it. Of course, very few agencies actually practiced community poliicng. It was far more important to say you embraced community policing and got money for it than it was to actually change to community policing practices.

In 1996, I was teaching criminal justice at a small college in West Virginia. The only other member of the CJ department was Will Oliver. Will was already an authority on community policing. He had written one book on the topic, and went on to write at least one other while on his way to his Ph.D. I asked him how long he thought the community policing gravy train would continue to run. He replied, without hesitation, “About five years. After that, everyone will be a lot more worried about terrorism.” This helped to confirm my hypothesis that Will was much smarter than me. On September 11, 2001, I became absolutely certain of it.

The big pile of money now said “Homeland Security” on it. And the grant writers shifted from the romance novels of Community Policing to the techno-thrillers of Homeland Security. We were no longer interested in winning their hearts and minds. Now, we would grab them by their gonads and twist until they told us where the cell was meeting. Everyone that could fill out a grant form got in on the sweepstakes. There were Segway scooters for bomb techs to ride on, and armored personnel carriers for cops that seldom encountered anything more powerful than a 9mm handgun. Five years later, our borders are as porous as ever, and we’re lucky to inspect 2% of the cargo containers that enter our ports. But the six-man East Dustbowl Police Department is fully outfitted with anthrax-proof biohazard suits that are guaranteed germproof until - wait for it - now. Maybe you can use them when you spray Round Up on your flowerbeds. We’re not playing “Who needs this money/equipment/resource most to accomplish the homeland security mission?” Instead, it’s another chapter of “Did you get yours yet?”

Communications interoperability was one of the nightmares of 9/11. The cops couldn’t talk to the firemen, the firemen couldn’t talk to the cops, and sometimes they couldn’t talk to each other. This is not a technological problem. The solutions are available as off-the-shelf equipment. The barrier to a solution is the same as it has always been - political. Instead of asking “how do we do this?” the question is usually “who will be in charge?” No one wants to give up any turf, and God forbid that Chief X take orders from Chief Y. On the ground, this is seldom an issue. The cops will pick up a fire axe if asked, and the firefighters will happily sit on Scummy M. Dirtbag until a policeperson can arrive to cuff and stuff them. But neither the folks on the red trucks or in the black and white cars have a lot to say about who is in the command post, or what radios they get to use. That battle is fought mostly by people who will never get dirty at the next Ground Zero (and I really hope you’re not so naive to think there won’t be a next one).

We learned that lawmakers could put their differences aside and place the good of the country ahead of their political agendas. In the days following 9/11, the word was “get it done,” not, “what’s in it for me?” That didn’t last long.

One aspect that has endured is that we have remembered that anyone has the capacity, and maybe even the duty, to be a hero. Although the Federal Air Marshal program has been greatly expanded, I don’t think anyone in their right mind believes that terrorists could take over a passenger aircraft the way they did on September 11th, FAMs or no FAMs. Once all the passengers had a crack at the martyr-to-be, there wouldn’t be enough left to stuff into one of those airline peanut bags.

And everyone has been reminded that we still have heroes walking among us. The public safety people that ran into the smoke and dust on September 11th didn’t hesitate to do so. Even if they had known that the towers were going to fall, I think they would have gone, anyway. I read a quote recently from a former hostage who had conducted himself honorably while a captive. He was responding to someone calling him a hero. I couldn’t find the source of the quote (perhaps someone will recognize it and let me know), but it was something like, “I’m not a hero. Heroes have a choice, and choose to do the heroic thing. I didn’t have a choice.” The people of 9/11 had a choice. They could have said, “Not me, fella,” and walked away. They couldn’t have been prosecuted, shot, and maybe not even fired. But they had trained and promised to do this if the time came, and it was time.

So, maybe there have been some lessons learned. Whatever they are or were, don’t forget them. Never forget.