Domestic Terrorism
This SLP assumes that you have a background in emergency management (mitigation, preparation,
response and recovery), knowledge of the incident response system (ICS) from local to national level
Background:
- You are the Principal the local Shining Star Elementary School. Your school contains 400 students and
is part of a four-school cluster. Your cluster is part of a school district that contains over 100 schools from
all levels.
- You are the emergency manager for this county of over 300,000 people. Your position is to prepare the
county for disasters in an area where the worst expected disaster is fire from storms or drought. Wind
storms are the next worst expected disaster. Your county is surrounded by counties of equal or larger
sizes in a larger city with a population of five million persons. Shining Star Elementary School is in your
county.
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- You are the Mayor of a town within the county that contains the Shining Star Elementary School. The
city police and fire department work for you.
- You are the Chairman of the County Supervisors in the county that contains the Shining Star
Elementary School. The county sheriff, fire department, health department, and county support offices
work for you.
Introduction
Domestic terrorism is the aggressive act of violence by the citizens of a particular country
against their own countrymen. The violence can be perpetrated against the people or the
infrastructure that serves the people of a particular nation. This act of terrorism is often
conducted by the citizens of a particular state with the aim of promoting social or a political
cause. The activities of domestic terrorist are wide and may involves related to cyber-crime, bank
robbery, kidnapping, violent crimes, organized crime, among others (FBI, 2011).
The United States PATRIOTIC Act gives directions on how those responsible for
security matters can track down terror suspects in order to disorganize their plots before they
subject the people to unnecessary danger. In fighting domestic terrorism, the PATRIOTIC Act
helps to protect civil liberties and provide common defense by weighing heavily on the civil
liberties and matters of national security. According to McNeil (2012), this Act also explains that
the American expectation of privacy is not unlimited since they enjoy a reasonable expectation
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of privacy. Therefore, anything one exposes to voluntary to the third party is not considered
protected and each and every individual has the right to report any issues that appears to be
amount to terrorism. However, this Act ensures that the security investigators have the necessary
tools at their disposal to track and prosecute all acts of terrorism against the American citizens.
Therefore, the PATRIOTIC Act is a reliable legislation for fighting domestic terrorism since it
has passed the constitutional muster and controls all aspects of disagreements over the role of
government and the actual abuse. Moreover, this Act empowers the government agencies to
perform their duties diligently and encourages oversight to prevent them from abusing the
powers that come with their authority (McNeill, 2011).
Scenario A
When terrorists invade such a large population of people, it is prudent to identify and
implement best practices, policies, and procedures that ensure that the skills, experience and
expertise of our security team are maximized and integrated with other security teams
(D’Angelo, 2007). I request the school security team not to counter the terrorist until they receive
support from external law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the police, and the CTU.
In combating domestic terrorism, we need some assets to help us track and prosecute the
criminal. First of all, we need human capital to help in coordinating the various activities aimed
at countering the terrorist. This will comprise of trained security personnel with the capabilities
of dealing with the criminals. Secondly, we need proper IT infrastructure to help coordinate
various activities of the security personnel. In addition, we need readily available finances to
support the activities of the security personnel. The security team must be equipped with proper
tools and equipments that can effectively be used to fight the terrorist (GAO, 2008).
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In fighting terrorism, some government agencies must be involved since terrorism is a
complicated act. The first agency that needs to be involved is the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU)
since they are heavily involved in domestic terrorism matters. We believe that the CTU will use
their experience in handling terrorism matters to provide an emergency solution in accordance
with our scenario. The next agency we will involve is the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
The FBI will provide us with ideas as well as the human capital to help track and prosecute the
terrorist. The FBI can also provide us with critical infrastructure and technology that can be used
in our situation. The next agency that we need to consult is the multidisciplinary Joint Terrorism
Task Forces (JTTF) so that they provide us with the necessary tools and equipments to help
investigate the motive and the background of these terrorists. Since we are caught in an
emergency situation, the JTTF will help to analyze and identify specific actions that will prevent
the terrorist from causing more damage to the school. We also expect the JTTF members to
support us with strategic change and innovation that will help us overcome any obstacle during
the rescue operation. We will ensure that all the above agencies get access to our database in
order to access the risk and possible rescue channels available in our institution.
Since fighting terrorism is a collaborative task, we need to involve the police in arresting
and prosecuting the terrorist. The police will provide us with human capital and the necessary
tools that are needed in our situation. In addition, the police will help us establish the law broken
and help to prosecute the terrorist. We also need to coordinate with the health bodies so that they
can take care of the persons who have been injured or killed during the terrorist attack.
Scenario B
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When the terrorist demand access to the media, their demands should be accepted since
defiance may result in more deaths. We will use the IT infrastructure at our disposal to ensure
that they access the media. The information that will be circulated in the media will enable us to
attract more sympathy from the general public leading to possible rescue operation. The
information that will be aired by the terrorist through the media will also enable our collaborators
and agencies involved to assess the real situation on the ground. We will need to coordinate with
the media houses so that the terrorists stop their ruthless killings since their demands. Moreover,
we will use all the communications assets at our disposal to ensure that necessary information is
circulated to all relevant stakeholders. At this stage, we will be keen and ensure that we meet all
the media demands and behave in accordance with their demands. By allowing the tourist access
to the media, we will be saving more life since the relevant authority may decide to relent to their
demands. Refusing to relent to the demands to the terrorist is very risky since they may decide
to kill the remaining lives since most of these terrorists are very dangerous.
After providing the terrorist with the access to the media, we will try to launch
negotiations with the terrorist to see if they agree to free the enslaved persons. Our argument
points will be based on the basis that we are very cooperative and still willing meet their
demands. If they refuse, we will urge the terrorist to release a portion of the captured persons,
mostly the students, remain with the teachers to give them some leverage. This is because
students are still young in age and such ruthless acts may negatively impact their psychology in
the future. Meanwhile, as we are in the process of negotiating with the terrorist, we will be
buying enough time for the national security agencies to reorganize themselves and possible
launch their rescue operations. After some time, we believe the police, FBI, CTU, and JFFT,
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together with our local security team shall have come up with the rescue operation that they will
launch against the terrorist and rescue the lives of both the students and their teachers.
References
D’Angelo, A. P. (2007). Strategic change and the Joint Terrorism Task Force: Ideas and
recommendations. Naval Postgraduate School. Monterey.
