Policing Uncertainty: On Suspicious Activity Reporting
Meg Stalcup2015, Modes of Uncertainty: Anthropological Cases
[the complete chapter with correct pagination is available at the Google books link above] Several of the men who would become the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. Mohamed Atta was cited for driving without a license in Florida near the end of April 2001. When he failed to appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. The warrant, however, seems not to have been flagged properly, since nothing happened when Atta was pulled over again, for speeding. In the government inquiries that followed the events of 11 September 2001, and in the press, these brushes with the law were missed opportunities. But for many police officers in the United States, they were moments of professional revelation and were also personally fraught. “It is always a local cop who saw something,” said the deputy director of an intelligence fusion center. He replayed for me how the incidents of contact had unfolded with the men and the uncertainty of every encounter, whether a traffic stop or someone taking photos of a landmark. Shortly after 9/11, major professional organizations for US law enforcement mobilized a series of working groups. Funded by the Department of Justice, these brought together leading city- and state-level law enforcement from around the country, and representatives from federal agencies. The groups worked on designing policies to include police officers in national intelligence, producing detailed recommendations and plans. Among these was what would eventually come to be the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Through its operation, police officers, as well as members of the public and industry, could submit tips and incidents of note from the ground. In turn, the federal government would communicate to participants timely information on security threats. While state, local, tribal, and federal governments; citizens; and those in the private sector were all included in the initiative, the network was organized around fusion centers and the work of police, who centrally designed both.
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