[Senate Hearing 114-592]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-592
FRONTLINE RESPONSE TO TERRORISM IN AMERICA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 2, 2016
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director
Brooke N. Ericson, Deputy Chief Counsel for Homeland Security
Colleen E. Berny, Research Assistant
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Brian B. Turbyfill, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
Robert H. Bradley II, Minority Professional Staff Member
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Benjamin C. Grazda, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Johnson.............................................. 1
Senator Carper............................................... 2
Senator Baldwin.............................................. 3
Senator Heitkamp............................................. 4
Senator Tester............................................... 4
Senator Portman.............................................. 5
Senator Booker............................................... 27
Senator Ayotte............................................... 30
Senator McCaskill............................................ 33
Prepared statements:
Senator Johnson.............................................. 39
Senator Carper............................................... 41
WITNESS
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Wally Sparks, Chief of Police, Everest Metro Police Department,
Weston, Wisconsin.............................................. 6
Hon. William J. Bratton, Police Commissioner, New York City
Police Department, New York, New York.......................... 8
Rhoda Mae Kerr, President and Chair of the Board, International
Association of Fire Chiefs, Austin, Texas...................... 10
Edward F. Davis III, Chief Executive Officer, Edward Davis, LLC,
and Former Commissioner of the Boston Police Department,
Boston, Massachusetts.......................................... 13
Mark S. Ghilarducci, Director, California Office of Emergency
Services, and the Governor's Homeland Security Advisor, Mather,
California..................................................... 15
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Bratton, Hon. William J.:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 52
Davis III, Edward F.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement with attachment........................... 62
Ghilarducci, Mark S.:
Testimony.................................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 98
Kerr, Rhoda Mae:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Sparks, Wally:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 43
APPENDIX
The BENS Report.................................................. 64
Statement submitted for the Record from Chief Gregg A. Cleveland. 110
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from:
Mr. Sparks................................................... 114
Mr. Bratton.................................................. 122
Ms. Kerr..................................................... 126
Mr. Davis.................................................... 132
Mr. Ghilarducci.............................................. 163
FRONTLINE RESPONSE TO TERRORISM IN AMERICA
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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Portman, Ayotte, Ernst, Sasse,
Carper, McCaskill, Tester, Baldwin, Heitkamp, Booker, and
Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. This hearing will come to order. I want
to welcome all of our witnesses.
The issues that we deal with in this Committee, I think,
speak right to our mission statement: to enhance the economic
and national security of America. And what we have here today
is a hearing that is really going to be talking about what
happens at the ground level--the men and women who really spend
their lives trying to protect the rest of us, and the very
difficult issues that they are grappling with.
We have Chief Wally Sparks from Wisconsin here. I met him
at one of our listening sessions as I traveled through
Wisconsin talking about national security issues. And the way
that this hearing, from my standpoint, is designed is that we
want to listen to Chief Sparks, who is trying to prepare for
what the rest of you have actually had to deal with, and what
he is trying to grapple with. And then, as we move on down the
list in terms of the testimony, you can start filling in, at
that moment, whether you had an active shooter or whether it
was an act of terrorism that you were having to deal with. Tell
us what worked, what did not work, and what we have to really
improve.
I know that, for Senator Baldwin and I, this hits pretty
close to home because on August 5, 2012, there was an active
shooter at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. And when
you look at the webcam from Lieutenant Brian Murphy's patrol
car, you see the bravery of the men and women who first
respond, who rush into danger.
Now, fortunately, Lieutenant Brian Murphy is alive today,
but he was shot 15 times by the perpetrator of that heinous
crime. And then Officer Sam Lenda also came on. You can see,
again, in the video, the bravery of the men and women.
So I think that it is the responsibility of this Committee
to make sure that the men and women who capably and
courageously protect our security have the tools and the
resources to perform that task. That is really what this
hearing is about. What tools and resources are required from a
Federal Government standpoint? How do we prioritize that
spending?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has about $1.6
billion appropriated for grants and the Department of Justice
(DOJ) has appropriated about half a billion dollars. That is
about $2 billion that we allocate for grants to help folks like
you. It sounds like a lot of money, but in a Federal budget
that is starting to approach almost four thousand billion
dollars--it is about $3.7 trillion right now--that is about
0.05 percent of our Federal budget.
Now, I think that the defense of this Nation, the defense
of our homeland, is a top priority of the Federal Government. I
think that we need to prioritize that spending and put that at
the top of the list.
So, with that, I will turn this over to Senator Carper, and
then we also have Senator Heitkamp and Senator Baldwin who
would like to make some brief opening statements as well.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
holding this hearing. I want to say thank you to Senator
Baldwin and Senator Heitkamp for proposing this in the first
place and also thank you to all of you who came here to make it
real for us. Thank you for what you do with your lives and for
your service to your communities and to our country.
Since September 11, 2001 (9/11), the Federal Government has
worked hard to ensure that those on the front lines in this
country--our police officers, our firefighters, and our
emergency medical personnel--are better prepared to help
prevent and respond to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
For example, we have helped local officials develop response
plans for mass casualty events. We have also helped train
thousands of law enforcement officers. And we have helped build
a network of fusion centers, as you know, to deliver more
timely information to our first responders.
Of course, we have also provided, as the Chairman has
alluded to, grant funding for equipment, for personnel, for
training, and for other needs. I am pleased that the spending
bill that we just passed in December, signed by the President,
contains over $1 billion in grant funding to help States and
localities prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks and
other disasters.
The recent tragedies in Paris, Boston, Chattanooga, and San
Bernardino, however, are a stark reminder that we must remain
vigilant and ensure as best we can that our first responders
are ready for anything that might come their way.
That is why we will be paying close attention next week to
the President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget request. We need
to make sure that it provides the selfless men and women who
keep us safe with the resources that they need to save lives
and stay ahead of the threats that we face as a Nation.
Today's terrorist threats are very different from those
that we experienced on 9/11.
Today, we unfortunately know that one or two people with an
assault weapon or a homemade bomb can create unimaginable havoc
and throw a whole city into chaos and turmoil. Cities like New
York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. have been dealing with
terrorist threats for quite some time. We know that, with the
help of online radicalization, a terrorist attack can happen
anytime, anywhere.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today
about how Congress can further help communities, both large and
small, to be better prepared for the type of terrorist attacks
that we are witnessing today, such as active shooter events.
I also want to hear about what else we could be doing to
stop homegrown terrorism and, extremism--something that I know
all of our witnesses are familiar with.
Last December, I introduced legislation to strengthen the
Department of Homeland Security's efforts to work with
community leaders in identifying and preventing homegrown
terrorist threats. It is my hope that we can move this
legislation soon, so that the Department is better equipped to
counter the hateful messages put out by the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist groups.
Again, we thank you all for joining us and a special thank
you to Senators Heitkamp and Baldwin. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Baldwin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BALDWIN
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
you and Ranking Member Carper for so quickly responding to
Senator Heitkamp's and my request to hold this important
hearing.
Like many of my colleagues, I hear from constituents
frequently about their very real fears of being attacked in
their own communities--and these concerns are not unwarranted.
Just last week, in my home State of Wisconsin, a terrorist
attack was thwarted. A 23-year-old man had a vicious plan to
kill, he said, at least 30 people at a Masonic temple in
downtown Milwaukee. In my initial conversations with the
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), officials indicated
that the fusion centers and the FBI databases, such as
eGuardian, which allows law enforcement to share intelligence,
were very useful in thwarting this planned attack.
In my view, we need to find ways to expand the use of these
tools, while certainly also guarding the privacy of our
citizens.
We were fortunate in this case, as we have been in others,
in preventing the attack. However, there will be undoubtedly
more attempts to disrupt our way of life. We have to remain
vigilant and ensure that our first responders have what they
need to prevent attacks and respond to them if they do occur.
One of the things that we have been taught in recent years
is that we must be able to prepare for the unthinkable. If you
think about 9/11, up until that point, security for commercial
flights was not designed to address the methods that were used
by those attackers.
I am working to address a similar blind spot by improving
the safety and security of trains that transport hazardous
materials. Often more than a mile long, these trains carry
volatile crude oil and other materials past the back yards of
my constituents and through our downtowns, which are densely
populated urban areas. And while I am proud to have made some
headway in including two provisions in our recently passed
highway bill to improve first responder access to information
in advance about these trains, I feel that there is still a
significant safety concern for our citizens.
So, I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses
today about what we can do. I hope that we have some take-homes
after this hearing and that we have specific actions that the
Federal Government can continue to take to address and assist
first responders in their tireless efforts to respond to
emergencies and keep Americans safe.
Thank you for all that you do, and thank you for being
here.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
I have had other requests, so let us keep this short, OK?
Senator Heitkamp, 2 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, Chairman Johnson and Senator
Carper for agreeing to hold today's hearing.
As Senator Baldwin has said, once Paris happened, the first
response that I had was: What if I were North Dakota's Attorney
General (AG) responsible for the Bureau of Criminal
Investigation? And how well would we perform, compared to the
people in San Bernardino? How well prepared would we be? And
you add that on top of these horrific attacks. No part of our
country is immune. No part of our country is somehow exempt
from this happening. It is not the left coast or the right
coast. It can happen right in the heartland, and we found that
out when, in 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) declared the Minot Air Base, which is responsible for
intercontinental ballistic missiles, a terrorist target.
And so, I am curious about where we go from here. Do you
get enough information from the Federal Government? Are they
sharing information? Are there turf protections? Are we, in
fact, training our first responders to, first off, keep
themselves safe and not do things that put themselves at
unnecessary risk, but also to contain the event? What are the
challenges that you have, as people who think about this,
immediately after this event? What are you doing today? And how
can we help? How can we help change outcomes? How can we be
better partners with those men and women who will always be our
first responders: the State and local people who are on the
front lines?
So thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for
appearing today. And I look forward to hearing more, learning
more, and helping to build a stronger Federal-State-local
partnership to protect all of the citizens of this country.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Tester.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR TESTER
Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
flexibility. I want to thank you, the Ranking Member, and
Senator Baldwin and Heitkamp for this hearing. I want to thank
the panel members here today. I appreciate the work that you
do. It keeps this country safe and, quite frankly, we need to
defeat ISIS, but we also need to protect our civil liberties.
And I think that you guys know that, as we move forward. And we
protect civil liberties by employing best practices and making
sure that the Federal Government gives you the resources that
you need to be successful.
It was about a year ago that we had some in this body who
turned funding for DHS into a political football. That is
unacceptable. Quite frankly, you need consistency, you need
continuity, and you need predictability. As first responders
and emergency personnel at the State and local level, you are
on the front lines of fighting terrorism in this country.
So, as this hearing is going to demonstrate, we need to be
serious about this issue--not play political games with it--and
give you guys the resources that you need, so that you can do
your jobs and so that we can hold you accountable for those
jobs.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Portman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. Mr. Chairman, I thank you and Senator
Carper for holding this hearing. We appreciate you all for
being here.
I just was in Ohio meeting with some of our folks who are
local law enforcement in central Ohio, the Columbus area, who
are part of the fusion center. These are county officials and
city law enforcement officials. And my question to them was the
same thing that I always ask our local law enforcement: Are
these fusion centers working as a two-way communication?
Usually this panel is populated by Federal law enforcement
officials, and that is good. And we bring them up, and we talk
to them about what they are doing. We have three fusion centers
in Ohio--one in Columbus, one in Cleveland, and one in
Cincinnati. I also met, by the way, with the FBI last week. Our
regional office covers half of Ohio. And my concern is that,
from what I am hearing from local law enforcement, it is
sometimes a one-way street. In other words, local law
enforcement is providing information, which is important, but
often they have a difficult time getting that information back.
So what I am interested in hearing today, particularly, Mr.
Chairman, is what kind of information flow do you see coming
from the Federal Government back to you? That is where I think
that we can be the most helpful to you in ensuring that the
citizens that we represent are safe.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Portman.
I ask that my written statement be entered in the record,
without objection.\1\
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 39.
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Senator Baldwin mentioned the attack that was thwarted on
the Masonic temple in Milwaukee. I just wanted to very briefly
read quotes from the foiled perpetrator, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh.
These are excerpts of quotes that he gave to an FBI informant.
``I am telling you, if this hit is executed, it will be
known all over the world. The people will be scared, and the
operations will increase. This way we will be igniting it. I
mean, we are marching at the front of the war, and we will
eliminate everyone.''
That is what this hearing is about. That is the enemy that
we face. That is the mindset of these people who want to
slaughter Americans in our own homeland.
So, again, thank you all for your testimony and for your
service to your communities, to your States, and to this
Nation.
And with that, it is the tradition of this Committee to
swear in witnesses, so if you will all stand and raise your
right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will give
before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Chief Sparks. I do.
Commissioner Bratton. I do.
Chief Kerr. I do.
Mr. Davis. I do.
Mr. Ghilarducci. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Our first witness is Chief Wally Sparks. Chief Sparks is
the chief of police of the Everest Metro Police Department (PD)
in Wausau, Wisconsin. The department serves three communities
with a total of 18,000 residents. He has 30 years of experience
in law enforcement and currently serves as president of the
North Central Chiefs of Police Association. Chief Sparks.
TESTIMONY OF WALLY SPARKS,\1\ CHIEF OF POLICE, EVEREST METRO
POLICE DEPARTMENT, WESTON, WISCONSIN
Chief Sparks. Good morning. I would like to thank all of
you for this invitation. I am truly honored to be able to speak
before this Committee today. When I was advised of who I was
testifying with, and especially who I was testifying in front
of, I was quite surprised that a local police chief from
Wisconsin was included in this group.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Chief Sparks appears in the Appendix
on page 43.
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But then, as I looked at the subject matter of the hearing
and realized how the topic of terrorism in America impacts each
and every single law enforcement officer in this country, I
finally understood why it was important for me, or somebody
like me, to be here.
I am sure that nobody on this Committee has ever heard of
the Everest Metro Police Department before, yet when it comes
to my distinguished colleagues, just the abbreviation of the
New York Police Department (NYPD) is all that is needed, and
everyone knows exactly what we are talking about.
But as I began to put that into perspective, I realized
that there is only one NYPD--and only one Los Angeles Police
Department (LAPD) or Chicago PD, for that matter. They
essentially have no peers in this country. Everest Metro PD, on
the other hand, probably mirrors similarly-sized departments
and communities in each and every State. When I look at the
States that each of you serve and represent, I imagine that
every one of you has your version of an Everest Metro PD or a
Marathon County.
And here are just a few statistics that underscore that
point: 84 percent of all sworn officers in the United States
belong to local police and sheriff's departments. When it comes
to local police departments, 86.2 percent have less than 50
officers and 72.8 percent have less than 25 officers. For
sheriff's departments, 77 percent have less than 50 deputies
and 58.3 percent have less than 25 deputies. Perhaps the most
telling statistic is that 49 percent, or almost half, of all
law enforcement agencies employ fewer than 10 full-time
officers.
I provide these statistics because I feel that it is
important for this Committee to understand that, while the
events in larger metropolitan areas tend to dominate the
headlines, the majority of policing efforts occur in smaller
communities. The size of a law enforcement agency can have a
significant impact on the delivery of policing services in a
community, particularly when discussing threats like terrorism.
So while I speak for our particular department, I am
probably echoing the voices of thousands of other local police
chiefs and sheriffs across this Nation who face the same
concerns and challenges that I do.
Even though our department is staffed very lean with 25
officers, we are still able to provide a relatively high level
of training, which you will find included in my written
testimony. This is likely not the case for those 49 percent of
departments with less than 10 officers, however.
We also understand that terrorists typically look for soft
targets, and they are learning and adjusting to how we, as law
enforcement, respond to threats. I think that there has been a
false perception in many communities, people think, ``It would
never happen here.'' But that reality is changing, with law
enforcement leaders across the country now remarking, ``It may
very well happen here, and if it does, are we prepared?''
So the first emphasis should be on making sure that all of
our law enforcement officers are given the proper training and
equipment needed to respond to such an event. There is no
Federal blueprint on what every law enforcement officer should
be trained in nor on the necessary equipment needed for a
response.
There should be more of a coordinated effort between the
Federal, State, and local agencies to make sure that local
agencies are properly trained and equipped. Failure to address
this will result in greater loss of life when these incidents
occur and will likely spur more attacks on smaller communities
as terrorists realize that they offer relatively soft targets.
The other key piece lies in effectively engaging and
utilizing all law enforcement officers in the effort to prevent
attacks. In the wake of the San Bernardino incident, there has
been a significant focus on the ``If you see something, say
something'' campaign. These calls will likely come into local
PDs as suspicious activity complaints. If the local law
enforcement agencies are not aware of critical information
pertaining to subjects in their community who are on the State
or FBI's radar, then we are missing a key piece of the
preventative puzzle.
In my 30-plus years in law enforcement, dialogue with the
Federal agencies has generally been a one-way street. This has
improved with increased efforts to expand information sharing
through the creation of fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task
Forces (JTTFs). However, the information gap still exists.
We need law enforcement leaders that will break down
parochial boundaries and cut through bureaucratic policies and
red tape. We must build closer relationships at every level and
push critical information down to our frontline officers, if we
are going to successfully thwart attacks. Our officers need
information in real time so that they can properly assess
potential threats and respond accordingly.
I want to thank each of you for your valuable time today,
and I look forward to answering any questions that you may
have.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Chief Sparks.
I originally mentioned the dashboard camera from the Oak
Creek incident, but with our next witness I also have to
mention the iconic pictures of the brave men and women of the
NYPD, the New York Fire Department (FDNY), and the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), as they walked
up the stairs of the World Trade Center (WTC), walking into
danger. That is really, again, why we are so appreciative of
your efforts.
Our next witness represents those fine men and women.
Commissioner William Bratton is the 42nd police commissioner of
the city of New York, the second time he has held the post. Mr.
Bratton served as the Los Angeles police chief from 2002 to
2009, making him the only person ever to lead the police
agencies of the two largest cities. Commissioner Bratton.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM J. BRATTON,\1\ POLICE
COMMISSIONER, NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEW YORK, NEW
YORK
Commissioner Bratton. Good morning. My thanks to the
Committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Commissioner Bratton appears in the
Appendix on page 52.
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The issue before us, the frontline response to terrorism in
America, is more pressing than at any time since 9/11. We
believe that New York City, where I am the police commissioner,
remains the top target for terrorists in the United States.
Since the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, New
York City has been the target or nexus for at least 20
terrorist plots--more than any other American city. There have
been four major cases in just the past 2 years.
Since 9/11, the NYPD has spent hundreds of millions of
dollars in Federal funding, city and State monies, and private
grants to counter that threat. My predecessor as police
commissioner, Raymond Kelly, oversaw the creation of a
sophisticated intelligence and counterterrorism capability. It
was highly capable, but it was limited by significant head
count restrictions, even though it was staffed with more than
1,000 personnel. Over the past 2 years, Mayor Bill de Blasio,
whom I work with, has addressed that by providing the largest
personnel and equipment allocations in the NYPD's history.
Because of these allocations, we are evolving in order to face
the increasingly diffused and complex threat picture.
That picture now includes ISIS and lone-wolf actors--
threats that barely existed 2 years ago and certainly did not
exist on 9/11. These entities--ISIL and others--attempt to
attract recruits through promises of valor, belonging, and
empowerment. While we are always on guard for the spectacular
al-Qaeda-style attack, with ISIS, we have seen a shift toward
low-tech, low-cost, and high-impact attacks, oftentimes
inspired and not directed by ISIS. November's Paris attacks
left 130 people dead. In San Bernardino, 14 were killed. In New
York City, this past spring, we saw three separate plots--all
influenced by ISIS--to either behead people, bomb public
events, or attack police, specifically.
But we cannot address these threats without partners. Two
years ago, I directed John Miller, my deputy commissioner for
intelligence and counterterrorism, to execute a ``collaborative
reset'' with our closest allies: the FBI, the Secret Service,
DHS, FDNY, and PANYNJ. Today we believe that we have seamless
relationships with all of these agencies. By way of example,
the FBI sits in on the NYPD's intelligence case meetings, and
we sit in on their meetings. We have also worked to improve the
NYPD's intelligence capabilities.
For more than a decade, with the help of the New York City
Police Foundation, we have placed NYPD liaison officers
overseas, where they work with and learn from local law
enforcement agencies. We currently have 11 stations and have
recently added one in Australia, as well as seconding an
officer to Europol. By getting real-time, on-the-ground insight
into overseas terrorist attacks--in Tunisia, France, Australia,
and Canada--the liaison program has helped us redesign our
tactical posture in New York City.
Given the nature of the threat, however, intelligence must
be accompanied by improved response and prevention
capabilities. Our primary asset in this regard has been our
Emergency Service Unit (ESU), the best trained police officers
in the world. But ESU is small, fewer than 600 officers, and
needs to be mobile. So for years, critical sites in New York
were instead guarded by patrol officers who were borrowed each
day from routine precinct assignments. These officers were
neither trained nor equipped to counter the type of threats
that they were deployed against. With the help of Mayor de
Blasio and the New York City Council, we created the Critical
Response Command (CRC). This new unit, CRC, is a dedicated team
of over 500 specially-trained officers with special weapons and
enhanced body armor and vehicles. They are briefed on the
latest intelligence, deployed daily to potential terrorist
targets, and prepared to mobilize for active shooter or
terrorist events.
We have also revamped our citywide task force, the 800-
member Strategic Response Command, which is primarily used for
crime response and disorder control. They, too, have been
trained and equipped for the new threat picture--all of them
are equipped with long guns, for example.
Today, we have 1,800 officers who are capable of being
deployed with special weapons across the city. That capability
is unmatched by any other city.
Despite this, it remains likely that the first officers on
the scene of any event will be patrol officers. Accordingly, we
have already trained over 3,500 of our officers in active
shooter tactics in a 2-day training. We will eventually be
training all 35,000 officers. In the training, officers learn
how to form small ``contact teams'' and move toward the threat,
with the aim of reducing the gunmen's ``time on target'' and
saving lives. We will continue the training until all of our
patrol officers have been trained.
And through our 16,000-member Shield Program, a public-
private partnership, we have already trained 20,000 civilians
in what to do--run, hide, or fight--if they find themselves in
such a situation. But, again, these threats cannot truly be
addressed without partners. For example, we have worked with
the New York City Fire Department to develop ways to get to the
victims of a Paris-style or Mumbai-style attack as quickly as
possible. The Rescue Task Force uses the new tactical teams
that we have developed to provide force protection for
paramedics in ``warm zones'' where shooting has ended, while
other teams--primarily ESU officers--go after the terrorists or
gunmen simultaneously in ``hot zones.''
Our efforts go far beyond these particulars, but being
mindful of time, my descriptions of a small number of others
will be very brief.
We have expanded the number of our bomb detection K-9
dogs, known as ``vapor wake dogs.'' We have added almost $160
million of technology, including the issuance and development
of smartphones to all 36,000 officers. The apps on these
devices have been paid for, in many instances, by Department of
Homeland Security grants. It is technology unrivaled by any
police organization in the world.
We also conduct many multi-agency tabletop exercises, which
we have had the good fortune to have the Secretary of Homeland
Security recently attend in New York.
And under the leadership of FBI Assistant Director Diego
Rodriguez, the 35-year partnership in our Joint Terrorism Task
Force--the first one in America--continues. One hundred of my
detectives are assigned to that unit.
New York City faces threats like no other and has invested
like no other, in terms of dollars, personnel, and
partnerships.
I, along with my colleagues, would be happy to answer your
questions relative to this testimony and any other issues that
you might have interest in. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Commissioner Bratton.
Our next witness is Rhoda Mae Kerr. Ms. Kerr is a fourth
generation firefighter and currently serves as the fire chief
of the Austin Fire Department. She is also president of the
International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) and the vice
president of the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association. Ms.
Kerr.
TESTIMONY OF RHODA MAE KERR,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHAIR OF THE
BOARD, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE CHIEFS, AUSTIN, TEXAS
Chief Kerr. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Johnson,
Senator Carper, and Members of the Committee. I thank you for
allowing me to testify here today. I am honored that I get to
be the lone representative of the fire service in this great
country.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Chief Kerr appears in the Appendix on
page 55.
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The International Association of Fire Chiefs represents
more than 11,000 members and leaders of the Nation's fire,
rescue, and emergency medical services (EMS). It is important
to recognize that the terrorist threat is evolving. The attacks
on 9/11 were carried out by a foreign terrorist group using a
coordinated strategy. The attacks were designed to generate
media attention and public fear.
As you mentioned, over the past years, we are seeing a
different terrorist threat. The incidents in Boston, Paris,
Garland, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino used a variety of
tactics. They were carried out by lone wolves or smaller groups
of individuals. They used tactics like gunfire and explosives.
In some cases, they may have communicated with overseas actors.
But in all cases, the planning for these attacks was hard to
detect.
The Nation's fire and emergency service is adapting to
respond to both large-scale and localized threats. For example,
we worked with our law enforcement partners and other
stakeholders to remove silos that were common prior to 9/11.
Also, the IAFC and other organizations are educating our
members and developing resources to help prepare for the wide
variety of threats. We look forward to partnering with Federal,
State, tribal, and local agencies, as well as other
stakeholders, to protect our communities.
In order to prepare for this new threat environment, local
fire departments require accurate information about threats to
our jurisdictions. Federal agencies like DHS and FBI can
educate us about the new tactics, techniques, and procedures
that terrorists use. Because many fire chiefs do not have
security clearances, this information should be transmitted at
the For Official Use Only (FOUO) or unclassified level. We need
to be aware of what the terrorists' plans are, not the sources
or the methods used to obtain them.
Like many major fire departments across the country, I have
firefighters stationed at my local fusion center. However,
there still needs to be greater fire and EMS involvement in
fusion centers. Also, the IAFC recommends that fire chiefs
reach out to local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force offices and
local law enforcement agencies to stay informed.
We also support the National Counterterrorism Center's
(NCTC's), Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team, which invites
first responders to work with Federal intelligence analysts.
Fire departments can be partners in the information-sharing
system. The IAFC encourages fire departments to take part in
the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Much
like evidence of domestic abuse, firefighters can report
evidence of suspicious activity, such as caches of explosives
or civilians asking for details about emergency response
procedures.
Fire and EMS departments also can educate law enforcement
agencies about evidence of the use of fire or hazardous
materials as weapons. Local fire and EMS departments also need
to plan and exercise for the response to a major terrorist
attack. They must develop capabilities to provide rapid on-
scene care, triage, and transport to patients. They must also
plan an exercise with local law enforcement officers, emergency
management personnel, and public health officials for these
events.
Command and coordination are important aspects of an
effective response. The IAFC supports the implementation of the
National Incident Management System (NIMS). NIMS implementation
requires constant use and preparedness exercises to ensure its
adoption by all emergency and support functions.
Many fire and EMS departments also have mutual aid
agreements with surrounding jurisdictions. These agreements
support localized and regionalized planning and
interoperability. For example, specialized response
capabilities, like a Hazardous Materials (Hazmat) Team, can be
shared in a region.
An interoperable communications system is also a vital
component of an effective response, and we thank Congress for
its leadership in allocating that 20 megahertz (MHz) in the 700
MHz band and for its $7 billion to help build a nationwide
broadband network. The First Responder Network (FirstNet) is
expected to focus on data communication first, and then, to
develop voice communications capability in the future.
In the meantime, local jurisdictions must rely upon the
land mobile radios, and there are several large cities, Boston
included, that still rely upon the T-band for interoperable
communications. We encourage you to look at the statutory
requirements that are going to require them to sell that T-band
network.
I am aware of the time here, so I am going to try to wrap
up my remarks very quickly.
In order to respond to the wide variety of terrorist
threats, the Federal Government provides grants like the Urban
Areas Security Initiative (UASI) and the State Homeland
Security Grant Program for specialized equipment, training, and
exercises. Local fire and EMS departments use this funding to
build and sustain mass casualty and hazmat response
capabilities. In addition, these funds are used to staff fusion
centers, and the grants also provide a vital incentive for
stakeholders to collaborate on terrorism response planning.
Again, as mentioned, it is important to note that the
public can play a vital role in terror response. The Stop the
Bleed campaign is working to educate the public about how to
provide hemorrhage control with the use of tourniquets during a
terrorist attack or an active shooter event. Local fire and EMS
departments can build upon public education programs like
Austin's ``Do Your Part'' program to provide the training.
I would like to thank Congress for its focus on homeland
security preparedness for first responders, and I am going to
thank you all. I am going to close out because I am over my
time. I am going to thank the Committee for the ability to
represent the fire and emergency service today. The terrorist
threat has evolved, and the Nation's fire and EMS systems and
departments are adapting to meet this threat. In order to be
prepared, it will require a partnership of Federal, State, and
local agencies, along with the private sector and the American
public. And I look forward to working with you all on these
efforts.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Chief Kerr.
Our next witness is Ed Davis. Mr. Davis is the president
and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Edward Davis, LLC, a
security and business strategy firm. Mr. Davis served as the
police commissioner of the city of Boston from December 2006
until October 2013 and he led the local response to the 2013
Boston Marathon bombing. Mr. Davis.
TESTIMONY OF EDWARD F. DAVIS III,\1\ CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
EDWARD DAVIS, LLC, AND FORMER COMMISSIONER OF THE BOSTON POLICE
DEPARTMENT, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Mr. Davis. Good morning, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member
Carper, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you
for inviting me to participate in the ``Frontline Response to
Terrorism in America'' hearing. This is a critically important
topic that touches each and every one of us and is in the
forefront of the daily news across the country and throughout
the world. It may be the active shooter incident in a
conference room that devastated a community in San Bernardino
or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at the Boston Marathon
finish line that destroyed the lives of many of my fellow
Bostonians. The terrorists who commit these heinous acts are
radicalized here and abroad, but the theme and the intent is
the same: chaos and the destruction of civilian populations,
offering no quarter to women or children. We must stop it, and
we must do so in an urgent and coordinated fashion.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Davis appears in the Appendix on
page 62.
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Today, Commissioner Evans and Mayor Walsh admirably protect
the city of Boston and do a great job in dealing with
terrorism. But in 2014, I testified before this Committee on
what worked and what did not work during the Boston Marathon
bombing response. At that time, I recognized the deceased.
Again today, I shall do the same: 8-year-old Martin Richard,
Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) Police Officer Sean Collier. I also recognize
every other victim in the United States, and those abroad,
whose lives have been senselessly taken by terrorists. We can
never forget them.
Progress has been made since we dealt with the Boston
tragedy. We are seeing improvements in the quality of
intelligence, coordination of agencies, sharing of information,
training, and equipment. Game-changing technologies have been
developed at a rapid rate, and first responders, including the
medical community and fire departments, are receiving life-
saving training and equipment, like the tourniquets issued to
all Boston police officers after the incident.
Recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Chattanooga,
and Garland, Texas demand a coordinated, common-sense response.
Community policing plays a very important role in the
prevention of these incidents. My former colleagues have long
recognized the effectiveness of community policing and are
laser focused on building community relationships,
transparency, and accountability. This becomes most effective
when reaching out to community members that are sometimes in
the shadows, those that do not attend community meetings or
religious services, and those activist groups that never sit
down with law enforcement officials. We need to move beyond our
comfort zone if we really want change and the important
information needed to prevent these attacks. Community policing
efforts need to be continuously and properly funded and trained
up. They should also be audited.
Intelligence gathering and sharing is another critical
prevention tool utilized by Federal, State, and local agencies
to fight terrorism. Fusion centers across the country provide
crucial information every day, in real time, to multiple
agencies as well as forward redacted information to the private
sector. Their value for prevention and crisis response
management has been proven time and time again. Fusion centers
should continue to meet annually to discuss issues, needs,
concerns, and trends--what is working and what is not. Funding
needs to be increased in order to attract talented analysts and
grow properly managed and effective fusion centers that
coordinate intelligence from all levels of government.
Since 2013, intelligence sharing among agencies continues
to improve. Impediments have been removed. Federal, State, and
local law enforcement need to continue working together as
equal members of Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country
and in fusion centers, with unrestricted access to information
that could identify terrorists in their early stages and
prevent catastrophic events. However, separate systems are ripe
for dysfunction. Any deterrent to this seamless coordination
needs to be extinguished.
Intelligence gathering occurs in this country,
domestically, every day. For 35 years, I have been a police
officer working on drug cases and organized crime cases. We
collect intelligence. We cannot be afraid to recognize that
fact and to manage it properly with the proper Federal
oversight. We need to look at what is happening, pay attention
to it, and make sure, as Senator Tester said, that it is done
constitutionally--but it does happen and it needs to be
coordinated at the top level of government.
I am a member of and work closely with the Business
Executives for National Security (BENS) organization. I have
included their recommendations, which I think are very well
thought out and on point, as to what can work to streamline our
intelligence-gathering services here in the United States.
In addition to that, there are other things that worked
really well during the Boston Marathon. Police officers respond
the way that they are trained. DHS provided us money through
the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) system to do that
training, and we responded the way that we prepared. That made
all of the difference in the world. And if you do not train,
you do not respond properly.
Social media is extremely important in ``establishing a
dialogue with people. You cannot establish a relationship in a
crisis. But social media allows police agencies, fire agencies,
and other public service entities in a city to connect with
people, to communicate with them, and to establish a dialogue.
And, finally, equipment is extremely important. The ability
to be able to respond, as Commissioner Bratton said, with
specialized equipment--not to be on display when it is not
needed, but to be immediately available when the balloon goes
up, as they say, is extremely important.
Finally, in closing, what I learned, in my role during the
terrorist attack in Boston, is that there is no panacea. The
reality is that such a challenge requires informed and trusting
community members who are not afraid to speak out, coordinated
intelligence gathering and sharing among all equal partners who
strive to prevent attacks, highly trained and well-equipped law
enforcement, fire, and EMS departments that respond in unison,
and, finally, all of you to continue to legislatively and
financially support these important efforts.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Davis.
Our final witness is Mr. Mark Ghilarducci. I think that I
got that right. Mr. Ghilarducci serves as the director of the
California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and
previously served as the Secretary of the California Emergency
Management Agency. He also serves as the Governor's homeland
security advisor (HSA), where he oversees Statewide public
safety, emergency management, emergency communications,
counterterrorism efforts, and the State Threat Assessment
System (STAS). Mr. Ghilarducci.
Senator Carper. First thing, would you just pronounce your
name for us?
Mr. Ghilarducci. Ghilarducci.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. I was pretty close.
Senator Carper. That was great.
Mr. Ghilarducci. Pretty close, yes.
Senator Carper. I am sure that we have butchered it in
worse ways than that.
Mr. Ghilarducci. No. Very good. Thanks.
TESTIMONY OF MARK S. GHILARDUCCI,\1\ DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES, AND THE GOVERNOR'S HOMELAND
SECURITY ADVISOR, MATHER, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Ghilarducci. Well, good morning everyone, and,
particularly, Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, and
ladies and gentlemen of the Committee. Thank you so much for
the invitation to address you on this important topic. It is
really an honor to represent California and the National
Governors Association (NGA) today to and to discuss the work
that we are engaged in from both a homeland security and an
emergency management perspective.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ghilarducci appears in the
Appendix on page 98.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As California's director of the Governor's Office of
Emergency Services and homeland security advisor to Governor
Brown, my portfolio and responsibilities straddle both homeland
security and emergency management. As a result, I bring a
unique and nuanced perspective to bear today as my
``aperture,'' so to speak, for viewing and working on many
diverse and complex disasters and emergencies--whether man-made
or the result of natural circumstances--is wide open.
The State's and the Governor's homeland security advisor
plays a critical role in ensuring that objectives, priorities,
and collaborative operational actions remain coordinated within
States and with local governments. The chief executive of a
State is ultimately responsibile for public safety and must be
kept informed and engaged. The homeland security advisor, who
is the Governor's point person on statewide security, must be a
focal point for Federal-State-local coordination and
collaboration to ensure a coordinated and proactive posture in
support of local government and the State infrastructure.
Anything other than this undermines the larger unity of effort
and the common operating platform necessary to detect, deter,
prevent, protect, respond to, and recover from a potential act
of terrorism.
As seen with the San Bernardino case, we continue to
experience challenges in obtaining pieces of intelligence, in
our ability to connect the dots, and in the lead-up to a
possible act of terrorism. There were a number of signs
associated with the suspects' actions and the related
engagement with co-conspirators that we, as an enterprise, were
unable to acquire.
Some of this is due to the use of encryption technology by
the bad guys. Some is due to legal provisions in place for
gaining access to or initiating the tracking of suspected
homegrown violent extremists (HVE). But some aspects of this
challenge can be still attributed to gaps in information
sharing and communication across all levels.
In recent years, homegrown violent extremism and
cybersecurity threats have evolved in fundamental ways and, in
many ways, we are still reactive rather than proactive in terms
of countering these evolving threats. This needs to change.
Built into our homeland security enterprise must be nimbleness
and proactiveness, so that we can get out and remain out in
front of these threats. This needs to have its foundation in
empowerment at the local and State levels, and it should start
with information sharing.
Currently, there exist many organizations engaged in this
intelligence arena, including the FBI, Department of Homeland
Security, the Department of State (DOS), State law enforcement,
local law enforcement, the fusion centers, and the
international intelligence community.
There remain information and intelligence stovepipes and
organizational protocols protecting designated proprietary
information that needs to be shared. Plots and terrorist
actions are carried out in communities at the local level and
within States. The impacts of such events, of course, are felt
nationally and internationally. This effort must be approached
as one team, fighting one fight, so that we can, together,
remain coordinated and lean forward as legally as possible,
leveraging all levels of government capabilities so that we can
all be on the same page in the effort to detect, deter, and
protect lives and property.
Currently, we as a Nation--local, State, and Federal--are
not optimally suited, in my humble opinion, to proactively
prevent evolving HVE-style threats. DHS remains a good partner,
but needs continual evaluation in order to be consistent with
current threat streams. Its coordination and communications
could be improved. Funding, training, and information sharing
can be inconsistent and there needs to be more robust
coordination with the homeland security advisors, Governors,
and State top-level homeland security officials when engaging
with locals and/or private entities within States.
With respect to fusion centers, there are 6 centers in
California, with some 72 across the country, and they are all
essentially frontline components to our Nation's homeland
security. Over the last several years, we have been forced to
evolve into all-hazard, all-crime centers in order to justify
existence. This has spread these centers thin at times, with
regard to their mission focus, and forced them to become
distracted at times from their core mission of
counterterrorism.
In California, our fusion centers are closely coordinated
by our STAS and oversight is provided by the homeland security
advisor. These centers, facilitated by local governance boards,
have incredibly strong public-private partnerships that are
leveraged to facilitate intelligence and information sharing as
well as to prepare for and respond to emergencies. This is all
coordinated at the regional and State levels. Building on these
best practices and looking at what works in a State the size of
California is important.
What worked best in San Bernardino was this exact system.
The response was very well executed in the overall context,
where the local authority led the immediate response and was
supported in a unified command through mutual aid coordinated
by the region and the State. This included personnel,
specialized equipment, intelligence and information,
situational awareness, authorities and clearances of
regulations, victim services, and recovery assistance.
Outside of the FBI, which is the lead Federal agency
supported by components of DHS, there were a few other Federal
agencies that provided direct services, incident funding, or
mutual aid assistance in a coordinated way, as did California's
mutual aid and standardized emergency management system. This
should be highlighted as a best practice and used as a
performance metric in modeling a strong unity of effort. The
team in San Bernardino was a unified team of local, State, and
Federal agencies working together with wrap-around and
integrated incident objectives. The incident required the
combined efforts of multiple organizations beyond law
enforcement, to include fire and EMS, public health, emergency
management, telecommunications, and faith-based nongovernmental
organizations, just to name a few.
I am proud to say that the relationship between local,
State, and Federal agencies in California is very strong, and
this was evidenced by the actions of city, county, State, and
Federal responders who came together in San Bernardino with the
common objectives of saving lives, protecting further loss of
life, and neutralizing a moving threat. This very dynamic and
dangerous situation demanded close coordination and
communications, and its success can be attributed to excellent
relationships, good training, appropriate equipment and
supplies, and robust coordination at all levels.
Nevertheless, San Bernardino did present lessons to be
learned, with gaps and challenges, particularly, with
information and intelligence sharing at all levels still being
a challenge and not at the level or quality that needs to be in
place to fully safeguard this country.
As an HSA, I require timely and regular intelligence
updates during an event of San Bernardino's magnitude to keep
the Governor informed, to engage with my local and Federal
counterparts, and to coordinate the statewide homeland security
and mutual aid mission that I spoke of previously.
When an event like San Bernardino occurs, we must be
careful not to revert back to not wanting to share
``proprietary'' information. The FBI in the San Bernardino case
received strong support from the Joint Regional Intelligence
Center (JRIC), located in Norwalk, California. But along the
way, it became a one-way information-sharing relationship
between the FBI and that fusion center. This impacted the
fusion center's communications responsibilities to the State.
This presented challenges and resulted in gaps in relevant
information getting to senior leaders and decisionmakers, who
needed to be kept informed, particularly, when the news was
reporting the ``proprietary'' information through open-source
media. This required the development of a time consuming work-
around to obtain necessary information at a number of critical
junctions at the information-sharing stage.
This must be one team, fighting one fight. With all of the
money and infrastructure established since 9/11 to safeguard
this country, we need to move past ``proprietary'' if we are
truly going to function in a manner that allows us to protect
the American people and maximize our total unity of effort.
In closing, let me reinforce that it is critical that we,
as an enterprise, understand that the threat landscape
continues to shift toward a more diffuse, amorphous threat that
focuses on homegrown radicalization and lone-wolf actors, who
are inspired by foreign terrorist organization's propaganda and
extreme ideologies, and are leveraged to act in any way
possible in all of our communities--large and small. This is a
new norm, just as deadly and much harder to counter. We must
remain vigilant, but also nimble and proactive enough to
address this evolving threat.
Enhanced training, adequate funding, the maintenance of
equipment and resources, and that collective unity of effort
are all absolutely necessary in order to meet these
requirements.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be happy
to answer your questions.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Ghilarducci.
I really appreciate the attendance of my colleagues here.
There are two choices: either limit the questions to 5 minutes
or limit them to 7 minutes, but I am going to use the gavel. So
we will keep it at 7, but I do not want answers going beyond 7
either. So let us discipline ourselves to be respectful of
everybody's time.
Chief Sparks, I want to start with you. I get a feeling
Senator Portman is going to be talking about information coming
down the chain. I really want to talk about the grant programs
that actually work, the coordination--we have heard that term a
number of times--with other departments, both big and small.
Can you just speak to which grant programs are essential, which
ones work, and hopefully which ones could be improved upon?
Chief Sparks. Well, the problem is, especially for smaller
agencies, it is really difficult to get some of those grant
funds down to the local level so that we can utilize them for
some of the training and equipment that we need. We
particularly like the Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS) grant. We applied for a COPS grant, and typically what
we saw was that, in Wisconsin, they went to the large cities.
They went to Milwaukee and Madison, and very little filtered
down to the local level.
But, as you heard from some of the other people on the
panel, it is critical--that training is critical. Like Mr.
Bratton said, in New York they have special teams that are
specifically trained with the equipment that they need. But, in
rural communities and in smaller departments, that response is
going to be from frontline patrol officers. So, whatever
equipment they have in their squads is going to be used to
respond. And, in smaller communities, you may have only one or
two officers, so you are going to have people coming from
multiple departments trying to go in there. So, we need to be
able to have grants that can be designed, not only for the
smaller communities, but presented in a fashion that encourages
the communities to work together and to train together.
In the county that I work in, we have nine law enforcement
agencies, excluding State and Federal. And only three of those
have probably the frontline training that they need to respond
to active shooters and provide emergency medical treatment
through Tactical Emergency Medical Specialists (TEMS) and
provided equipment--and each of our officers carry that
equipment.
The other six agencies really have no level of training,
and if we have an incident, we are going to be working with
them. So it is important that you can funnel funds through your
grant programs that are designed to--maybe on the ``train-the-
trainer'' programs through the local municipalities, start
funneling grant funds through a technical college system, where
you can put them out regionally through the State and
encourage--or maybe even tie into that funding--the idea that,
at the county level, you will train the trainers, but the
caveat is that you have to reach out to the other
municipalities that provide that training.
Chairman Johnson. So, it takes just a lot of time and
resources to write a grant, correct?
Chief Sparks. Exactly.
Chairman Johnson. So, I think that potentially one of the
solutions, from an overall Federal standpoint, is determining
how we can help the smaller communities, so that you can spend
the time training rather than grant writing. And I think that
we are all mindful of that. Let us face it. The thwarted plot
was in Milwaukee, but no community is safe. So I think that we
really need to be mindful of that.
Commissioner Davis, you talked about the need for
intelligence-gathering capability explained and how we are
gathering it, but then we always hear about stovepipes. Can you
speak to the problems that we are still running into and what
needs to be done to continue to lower those stovepipes, so that
we actually do have what I consider to be the first line of
defense against these terrorist acts, an effective
intelligence-gathering capability, while being mindful of our
civil liberties?
Mr. Davis. Certainly, Senator. So, in being mindful of
civil liberties and in understanding that intelligence
gathering does occur, coordination of the various agencies is
really important. And one of the problems that I see is that,
if you pick one agency to be in charge of it all, then the same
kind of problem occurs with some focus on that particular
agency.
If this goes up to the level of the Director of National
Intelligence (DNI) Office, then the control is happening--or
the oversight, the auditing, and the sort of direction of best
practices is occurring at the highest levels of government, and
it is not vested in the one agency or the two agencies that are
picked out among equal players. And I really think that that is
important. Anytime that you have silos, you have the
possibility of missing something. And it has happened over and
over again, and based upon my colleague's testimony in the San
Bernardino case, it seems to have happened again there. And I
think that it will continue to happen until there is a coach,
somebody that is in charge of the whole thing that says that
you have to play together properly. It is like a sports team.
Chairman Johnson. Talking about playing together, kind of
going back to Chief Sparks' problem in a smaller community,
again, being mindful of the fact that in New York or in
Boston--maybe talk to Mr. Ghilarducci here--how do we get those
funds allocated in an efficient way? How do we provide the
training, so that, not only are we covered in the large
cities--where, let us face it, those are very severe threats.
But how do we get the training, the dollars, and the grant
money down to the smaller communities in an efficient manner? I
will start with you, Commissioner Bratton. And do you feel some
kind of responsibility to help that process? Because,
obviously, I know that you are fighting for the funds, but what
can we do to help?
Commissioner Bratton. I am coming at it from a different
perspective than some of my colleagues, having been in charge
of Los Angeles (L.A.) and New York, the two largest cities in
the country. The issue of how to get it down to the smaller
agencies is not one that I have had to grapple with, but how to
get funds is certainly one that we have grappled with. Early on
in the DHS process, as it was being created, the issue of
control was centered at State government levels, where the
money would come down through the State and the State would
take a certain percentage as their fee, if you will. We have
had great problems with that, both in L.A., and, in some
respects, even now in New York.
So I do not have a solution for you on that issue, other
than to reinforce the importance of those grants--and in no
city have they been more important than in New York, where we
have received, since 9/11, about $1.4 billion from the Federal
Government through various grants, all of which have been part
of the wide range of activities that we engage in in New York.
This is similarly the case in Los Angeles, which received
hundreds of millions of dollars during this time.
One of the great strengths of democracy, is the way that we
operate in this country, with all of these thousands of
communities--18,000 police departments--but it is also one of
our greatest weaknesses: trying to get them coordinated and
trying to get them collaborative. And that still remains a very
significant weakness. How do we get all of these silos, at some
point in time, to come together?
Chairman Johnson. I will be respectful of my time as well.
That will probably be a question for the record--any
suggestions on what we can do, Mr. Ghilarducci, in terms of
California. Again, I do not want to take more time because I am
out it, but I would really like to see your recommendations for
how we can effectively and efficiently allocate those
resources, even to the smaller communities as well.
Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone.
Chief Kerr, just give us one really good example of how the
Federal Government can better support fire and emergency
service providers. Just give us one good example.
Chief Kerr. I think that the way that we can help support
our first responders and the fire and emergency medical service
is through continued grant funding and the sharing--and this is
the key, critical thing that we have heard here today--of
intelligence and information. The fire service does not have
State or Federal backup or reinforcements. The local fire
service is it when it comes to responding to terrorist events.
So it is really important that every entity, whether they
are in a small, local community or in a large, major urban
city, has access to the intelligence and the information, so
that they know what they are going into.
So I think that it is really important that we can somehow
fund or prepare people to be part of the Joint Terrorism Task
Force offices. I am very fortunate in Austin. I have a
firefighter in the Austin Regional Intelligence Center. I have
a firefighter that sits on--or is part of--the FBI Joint
Terrorism Task Force. And I have another firefighter that is
destined to the National Counterterrorism Center in that regard
as well. But that is not the case for firefighters around the
country, and that is something that we definitely have to
improve.
Senator Carper. Great. Thank you so much.
Commissioner Bratton, I think that you may have mentioned
in your testimony--did you hold up a smartphone? I think that
you indicated that these smartphones were being provided for, I
think that you said, 36,000 police officers. Here is my
question, and I will make you a guided missile. Here we go. I
remember when we wired every public school classroom in
Delaware with access to the Internet. We provided a lot of
computers in the school classrooms and I went, as Governor, to
visit the schools to see how the teachers were using them--and
they were using all of the technology for their emails. And I
said, ``I do not think that is what we had in mind.'' And we
had to train them. We had to train them. It was a combination
of using our technical community college to train them and,
frankly, using younger teachers to teach the older teachers how
to use the technology.
What advice would you have for other police departments--or
fire departments, for that matter--across the country that are
using this kind of technology, buying the phones and all of
these apps, to make sure that they actually get their money's
worth?
Commissioner Bratton. It is a new field, in the sense of
how police agencies--and I will speak to my agency--are using
these devices. I think that I would be correct if I were to
indicate that what we are doing in New York is probably
unparalleled anywhere else in the country at the moment. We
have been fortunate, through Federal grant funds as well as
asset-forfeiture funds, to have been given hundreds of millions
of dollars so that we have been able to develop technology that
we will be seeking to share with my colleagues across law
enforcement and the fire services--lessons learned, as you
will, as we move forward with this technology.
But it is essential that we get this technology into the
hands of our police officers, so that if I am looking for a
terrorist on a terrorist alert, I can send out his information,
his photo, to 36,000 officers instantly. If I am looking for a
lost child with autism, I can send out that photo. My officers
instantly, through their various apps, can access just about
everything that we have, in the way of intelligence, on an
issue.
So it is 21st Century technology that has come, fortunately
very early in the 21st Century, and it is going to be essential
going forward.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you. My question was about
the training. We are not going to pursue this any----
Commissioner Bratton. Training is absolutely essential in
the job, but where we are with the training is that we are
learning every day. The creativity of our officers and how they
use these devices, we are keeping a running journal on how they
are using the devices to creatively use the information, solve
crime, and connect with the community. The connection with the
community is one of the principal benefits. So the training
that we give initially is, we are training them----
Senator Carper. That is good.
Commissioner Bratton. We are learning from them also.
Senator Carper. That is good. You mentioned connections to
the community--and I only have a limited amount of time, so I
apologize for interrupting you. Secretary Johnson just hosted
for breakfast the leadership of the homeland security
authorizers in the House and the Senate, as well as the
appropriators. One of the things that we talked a bit about was
the Department's interest--they are very much interested--in
our passing legislation that authorizes something called
``Community Partnerships and Countering Violent Extremism
(CVE).'' And the idea there is to go to the root causes. And it
is all well and good that we degrade and destroy ISIS--I think
that that is critically important. It is important that we do a
very good job of vetting the people that are trying to come
here, either as refugees, through the Visa Waiver Program
(VWP), or through any other kind of program. But it is also
important that we figure out how to reach out into the
community. It could be to faith-based groups, it could be to
nonprofit organizations, or it could be to others. And what the
Department is trying to do--and we have given them some money
to create the entity, have the leadership, and get the grants--
to have $50 million for grants.
Would you just respond to this approach? Is this a valuable
approach for us to pursue. Mark, do you want to go first? That
way I do not have to say your last name. Ghilarducci?
Mr. Ghilarducci. You guys will get it.
Senator Carper. It is coming to me. Go ahead. Just be very
brief.
Mr. Ghilarducci. Yes. Let me just say that there is nothing
linear about any of these homeland security and
counterterrorism efforts. It has to be a whole-of-community
approach. If we are really going to counter this, it has to
involve all of these entities--nongovernmental all the way down
to school kids.
This dynamic is changing our country and we need to be
informing and empowering people to, not only recognize what is
happening, but to be a part of the solution.
Now, that can be done while protecting civil liberties and
our constitutional rights. But, much like we have seen in
history in the past, there are certain things--certain
threats--whether they are natural or man-made, where we want to
empower folks to be able to make themselves a part of the
solution.
So this effort that the Secretary is talking about is a
good one because it does actually begin that process of
countering and----
Senator Carper. I am going to ask you to hold it right
there. Thank you very much.
Raise your hand if you think that what the Department of
Homeland Security is pursuing is a smart idea.
Let the record show that four to one say that it is a smart
idea. Commissioner Bratton, we will talk with you about it
later. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you. I appreciate all of your
testimony. I want to start where the conversation is right now.
We are talking about communication. We have been talking about
communication at the local, State, and national level, talking
about communication among peer agencies--and how we can do a
better job if we have a ``coach'' rather than silos, and
talking about public and private conversations as well as
conversations within governmental agencies.
Chief Kerr, you talked a little bit about interoperability
in your testimony, especially regarding real-time response to
an emergency--whether that emergency is man-made or naturally
occurring. I want to just use a quick example. Mr. Chairman, I
have some testimony from Chief Gregg A. Cleveland, the fire
chief from La Crosse, which I would like to ask unanimous
consent to enter into the record.\1\
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\1\ The statement from Chief Cleveland appears in the Appendix on
page 110.
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Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
Senator Baldwin. Great.
The reason that I raise this relates back to some of the
concerns that I expressed about the movement of hazardous
materials--obviously subject to an accident if it is by train
or even if it is by truck, but also subject to nefarious
terrorist activity.
In La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Chief Cleveland works, they
have invested huge amounts of money into upgrading their
communications equipment to respond to a real-time emergency.
La Crosse is on the Mississippi River. La Crosse has a rail
line running through it along the Mississippi. On the other
side--the Minnesota side--there is also a rail. Both transport
hazardous materials on a daily basis. Their upgraded
communication system could not operate with the Minnesota
side--even though they had just invested a very significant
amount of local resources with that upgrade.
What is your sense of the status right now, in terms of
interoperability? And I would certainly be interested in all of
you--hearing your perspective briefly on where we are right now
with those investments as well as how you would be able to
communicate in real time during an emergency--natural or man-
made--with the agencies that you need to coordinate with. Let
us start with you, Chief Kerr.
Chief Kerr. Thank you, Senator Baldwin. The FirstNet, which
I mentioned, is the federally designated network and it is an
independent entity within the U.S. Department of Commerce. They
are the ones that have been charged with completing and working
out the 20 megahertz band that was designated for
interoperability.
The first part of that is going to be for sharing data only
and then the voice transmission will come second. So the land-
to-mobile radio system, which Chief Cleveland was talking
about, has its limitations when it is built out only to
communicate within its own entity. That is a critical part of
being able to communicate and share information ``across the
river'', so to speak, which you are not able to do.
The answer eventually will be FirstNet, but it is not going
to come in the next year or two.
Senator Baldwin. Let us go down the panel. Chief Sparks,
can you talk about your reality on the ground in Everest?
Chief Sparks. Actually, countywide in a scenario, we do
have interoperability. So, police, fire, and EMS, we are going
to be coordinated, as far as our communication goes.
Commissioner Bratton. Where we are is certainly not where
we need to be. We are making progress all of the time.
Recently, Congress--yourselves--voted to increase the spectrum
available to us--dedicated spectrum--which is critical to
interoperability. But every community is still wrestling with
it. In my city, by the end of this year, finally, my subway
cops--the cops who work below ground and then the others who
work above ground--will be able to use radios below or above
ground without having to go through a whole series of
connections to try and talk with each other. And, similarly, we
are continually improving our relationship communications with
our fire colleagues.
But we still have a long way to go in this country. It is
going to cost a great deal of money to do it. It can be done,
but the devil is in the details--and the devil is in the
budget.
Senator Baldwin. Is that your most significant gap, the one
you pointed out with the subway police?
Commissioner Bratton. It is a significant concern,
certainly in an active-shooter issue and in a disaster issue.
The interoperability capabilities that we have seen time and
again in every one of these instances is the inability to
communicate in real time.
Senator Baldwin. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. We have cobbled together a system of
interoperability in Boston that works effectively. It is not
pretty, but it gets the job done. But that interoperability is
based upon the T-band that the chief mentioned earlier. And the
FirstNet legislation removes that T-band from us at a
particular point in time. And with the slow progress of
FirstNet, we need to address that issue because if we lose the
T-band, then we lose our interoperability in Boston.
Senator Baldwin. Mr. Ghilarducci.
Mr. Ghilarducci. I would just say that there is no silver
bullet with interoperable communications. And I think that
initially after 9/11, when we were talking about interoperable
communications, there was the thought that you could lay down
an overarching system nationwide--and I think that this is the
concept behind FirstNet, which we have been engaged with.
But in the absence of that--and leading up to that--we have
dealt with a lot of regional interoperable capabilities.
California, specifically, has a very robust mutual-aid system.
We move resources up and down the State for disasters all of
the time, and so that precipitates the need to have multiple
agencies talking to each other in different jurisdictions. A
lot of that is done via mobile interoperable communications
capabilities, which have to be put in place. It is backed up
through a redundant system to the Statewide Microwave Network
that can support that. And we have had some regional projects,
like the L.A. Regional Interoperable Committee (LA-RICS) and
the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications Systems
Authority (BayRICS). There has been a lot of engagement by the
private sector into that, which has complicated the matter a
little bit. I am sure that you do know, in the Bay Area, that
really was a large factor that actually caused that BayRICS
project to end.
So I would say again, like the other panelists have said,
we have further to go on the interoperability. But, there are
pockets of development that have been put in place in
California that have worked pretty well.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
Again, I want everybody to be mindful of the clock and of
wrapping things up so that we stay on time. Senator Heitkamp.
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to discuss making sure that we are all taking a
``one team, one fight'' approach and sharing information,
because if there is one thing that I hear over and over again
when talking with my first responders, it is that, once an
incident happens, we are all in it--and then, there is that
immediate response of collaboration and cooperation--but that
starts eroding, in terms of what we know, what we can find out,
who is talking to who, and where we can go from here. And I
think, Director, you spent a lot of time in your written
testimony on this issue. We had certainly hoped that after 9/
11, when we talked about these communication gaps, we would be
further along in making sure that there was a fair amount of
Federal to State and local respect for the need for data, for
information, and for intel.
You raised a lot of these concerns in your testimony. You
did not offer us a whole lot in the way of solutions--other
than a ``let us do better'' kind of systemic structure that we
could be looking at which could be helpful as we deal with your
Federal partners. So could you offer some concrete examples of
how we could do better in terms of information sharing?
Mr. Ghilarducci. Well, let me just start out by saying that
the overarching information sharing structure and our
collaborative efforts have improved exponentially since 9/11,
to use that as a baseline. That does not mean that we do not
need to do more, and as we have these events that occur, like
Boston, San Bernardino, or Chattanooga, we learn little bits
each time about what has worked and what still needs to be
improved.
I think that generally there is a sense in the
organizational cultures that exist to want to keep information
sort of inside their organization. This is not just at the
Federal level. It is also at the local level and at the State
level. And so, we need to build into our training programs
right from the beginning--in our academies and in any of the
training programs that we are doing on terrorism--curriculum
expressing the importance of sharing information. Really one of
the cornerstones of being able to counter terrorism is sharing
critical information amongst all of the players. It does not
matter that I am wearing a State patch and he is wearing a
Federal patch and she is wearing a local patch. When it comes
to this--that is the concept of ``one team, one fight''--and we
should be able--we all have clearances. We should be able to
all get that information appropriately.
Senator Heitkamp. I understand what you are saying,
Director, but what you are talking about is changing the
culture--not systemic changes. And I am interested in any other
comments from any of the other panelists in terms of how we
institutionalize cultural changes, not just say, ``Let us do
better, let us work together better''. So maybe, Mr. Bratton,
you can help me here.
Commissioner Bratton. I think that at this particular time,
I could point to my city as a model of what you are trying to
get to. For many years in New York, the collaboration was not
all that it could have been. We were dealing with a combination
of personalities, skill sets, and intelligence handlers not
trained to the same level. The BENS Report that both
Commissioner Davis and I would recommend to the Committee
speaks to a lot of these issues: the importance of leadership,
the importance of the collaboration of that leadership, which
pushes down into the organization, but also the creation of
systems that ensure the sustainability that you are talking
about, and also the training of personnel. A major gap in our
situation is our intelligence handlers. Many of them come into
the organization and within a couple of years they leave
because there is no upward mobility--and the quality of
training is not consistent across the agencies.
Senator Heitkamp. One of our roles here is to hold Federal
agencies accountable, is to have that oversight--that kind of
accountability. In order to do that, we need something more
concrete than ``You need to change your culture'' or ``You need
to be more communicative.'' We need to have benchmarks or
measurements that can, in fact, be enforced and will, in fact,
build a better culture because there will be a known list of
expectations.
I am curious about--and I will look at--the BENS Report and
take a look at those secondary sources. But you are all here
right now--and we have training needs and we have equipment
needs--I recognize all of that. We are working hard to make
sure that we are using everything as efficiently as we can. But
I think that it is more elucidating to get to this problem of
information sharing, which I think is critical for the
protection of the citizens of this country. And so, where are
the benchmarks so that we can say, ``Look, this is what our
expectation is. How are you communicating beyond the fusion
centers? Are these fusion centers simply box-checking or are
they actually doing what we expect them to do? ''
Mr. Sparks, you and I come from the same small-town
universe--actually, you are from a very large town in my
universe. And it needs to filter down, not only to the major
cities and not only to the major States, but we also need to
have that trust level with States like North Dakota and
Wisconsin. So what would you offer in terms of our ability to
look at holding Federal agencies more accountable?
Chief Sparks. Well, let me give you a classic example. I
talked to one of the chiefs in our area. He retired just a
couple of years ago as a Federal Supervisory Police Officer. He
did not want me to state the specific organization. But he said
that he was frustrated because he had a lot of information that
would come to him--terrorist-related information--and he would
have specific information, but he had local contacts who he was
not allowed to share anything with.
Now, I understand the need for secrecy on an active
investigation, but some of this was general information: ``This
person is going to your community. He is meeting up with this
person.'' And he said that he was frustrated because he could
not share that information with local law enforcement. And, as
he moved up the chain of command and asked why, he said that it
was because those local law enforcement officers did not have
security clearances.
So, to touch on some of the other comments here, you have
to be able to eliminate some of that. And, even if you cannot
trust local law enforcement with information, we are shooting
ourselves in the foot. We are not going to be able to prevent a
lot of this stuff. You are missing 80 percent of law
enforcement agencies across this country. You have to break
down some of the policies that are inhibiting that.
Senator Heitkamp. I think that there are a lot of us here
who go into the secret, hidden room and hear things, only to
walk out and see them on the front page of the New York Times.
We share your pain in terms of overclassification and the
overprotection of data. And that is something that we need to
be talking about, because you cannot get the expertise of the
men and women who are the eyes and ears--who are on the street
every day and could say, ``Oh, that is what they are talking
about. We have seen that.'' In fact, doing so builds on that
intelligence. We have to get through this issue.
And so, thank you, we look forward to any additional
suggestions that you have going forward. My time is up.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Heitkamp. That might
be a good subject for a hearing, the overclassification of
material, because I think that it is certainly within our
Committee's jurisdiction on oversight, but it potentially even
falls under legislative jurisdiction. Senator Booker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BOOKER
Senator Booker. First of all, I just want to thank the
panel. Your leadership is extraordinary. Having been a mayor
and having had to deal with the challenges of an urban police
department, I am aware that every single day we have officers
out there who are doing heroic things that never make the
papers or never make the news, but ultimately that are saving
American lives and securing property. So I am grateful for your
service and your commitment is just something that is worthy of
respect.
I would like to first talk really quickly about the idea of
dual usage. It has come up a few times. The reality is that we
do all of this work to prepare for counterterrorism, but our
first responders, when gunshots go off, they are responding to
a situation.
Now, there have been at least 80 mass shootings, as defined
by four fatalities or more, since the Columbine massacre of
1999. Nine of those mass shootings were at schools. Less than
10 of these incidents have been described as a product of
homegrown extremism. And when I am talking about that, I am
talking about mass shootings, not bomb threats or other plots.
Many capabilities which support terrorism preparedness
simultaneously--obviously--support preparedness for these other
hazards, which are becoming incredibly frequent in our Nation.
And so, what I would like to understand is, as we are
funding a lot of these things--really two sides of this--one
is: Can you discuss sort of the dual use, why this is helpful
in that effort? But then also, Mr. Ghilarducci----
Mr. Ghilarducci. You guys are going to be perfect at
pronouncing it when we are all done. [Laughter.]
Senator Booker. Thank you very much. ``Booker'' is a hard
one, too, so I feel your pain. But you talked about how it
might be straining some of these resources because there are
multiple usages for them. So I would just like to understand--
and perhaps starting with Commissioner Bratton, who I owe a lot
of gratitude. We share a metropolitan region. The work that you
and your department do benefits everybody in the New York City
region. I like to think of it as the Newark region. But I want
to thank you for your leadership. I would love to get your
thoughts about this.
Commissioner Bratton. Actually, you raise a great point,
because one of the good things, if you will, about the issues
of terrorism--and particularly the form of terrorism that we
are most concerned with in this country at this time: the lone
wolf--is in many respects--other than motivation--not different
than what we are dealing with with the active shooters, with
all of their various motivations. The response is very similar.
We learned after Columbine that we have to get in there and get
the shooter. We learned through the various terrorist acts
committed around the world that we have to get in there and get
the shooter. And we are constantly learning about how to deal
with the shooter, while at the same time preparing to deal with
the victims who are in the same location while we go in.
So the duality is a strength that we can build on because
we can train our officers to deal with the current terrorist
threat--and the most significant one currently is an ISIS-
inspired or ISIS-directed assailant--and at the same time, in a
country that has as many guns as we do, where mass killings
have become a very commonplace circumstance and one that our
officers--all 800,000--and our firefighters increasingly are
drawn into, we can prepare them for all active shooters. So
training for one is effectively training for the other.
Senator Booker. Yes, please, Chief.
Chief Kerr. I would just like to comment on the dual threat
and the dual use. I am proud to say that in Austin we have
worked extensively with our law enforcement partners and have a
developed, strategic operating plan that we use and have
drilled and exercised on. And I think that the importance
here--how you all can help--is first of all by providing those
opportunities and, second, by providing the funding that will
allow us to continue to hold those large-scale exercises and
drills so that we are practicing what we need to do and sharing
standard operating procedures. This way, we are skilled at
getting into the ``warm zone,'' applying those tourniquets, and
pulling people out that are savable and then allowing law
enforcement to protect us and go after the shooter. Let the
fire service or the EMS service get in there, get the people
out, and get them into the cool zone where they then can be
transported for treatment.
Senator Booker. Great. Would somebody else like to comment?
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator. The issue of dual use is
extremely important in the city of Boston. We leverage the
funding that we have been using for the fusion center to work
on crime analysis across the board. The intelligence streams
are all the same. We are looking at different crimes that are
occurring and deriving an incredible benefit, reducing common
crime and violent crime in the city by centralizing those
functions into one group. They are specially trained. They
become very good at the numbers--at predicting where crime is
going to occur--so that our deployments are much more
effective. It works very well for us in Boston.
Senator Booker. Thank you. Mr. ``G''?
Mr. Ghilarducci. Actually, I think that what you saw in San
Bernardino was the execution of how dual-use training and
policies and procedures came together. Those officers, those
firefighters, and the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) medic
program were all trained. In fact, at the time of the San
Bernardino shooting--that exact time--we had a multiagency
active shooter training going on. I do not know if you knew
this or not, but, in fact, many of the people in the class
thought that the actual event at the health center was part of
the exercise--until they realized that it was not.
One of the things that I have been able to do in my role as
HSA is drive funding--and put requirements on that funding--so
that fire service, law enforcement, and EMS, which are going to
develop a training program in these kinds of things, have to
come together around the table and development common sense
operational constructs and build that into everything across
the board, from school safety to hospital safety. And that
really has been a benefit to all of----
Senator Booker. Thank you, Mr. Ghilarducci.
A last question in 30 seconds, Commissioner. So you have
heard a lot here. If you were a U.S. Senator--we are having
issues with interoperability, with critical investments being
made so that we can do the training. There have been some
concerns about funding programs. You are obviously a big-city
leader, but you see States like mine that have lots of small
towns--not necessarily the experience that you have--working
together. Could you give like three things that you would do
and that you would focus on if you were a U.S. Senator?
Commissioner Bratton. Funding is absolutely critical. The
development of standards, as the Senator spoke to, is also
critical. And, third, in this day and age, the issue of
communications is absolutely critical across the line, up and
down--and that also requires funding. So I would suggest your
role in the U.S. Senate--as well as your colleagues' role in
the House--is to ensure that funding is available for hometown
security, because hometown security is what homeland security
is all about.
Senator Booker. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Ayotte.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AYOTTE
Senator Ayotte. Thank you, Chairman. I want to thank all of
you for being here today.
Commissioner Davis, I wanted to follow up regarding the
Boston bombing terrorist attack--I really appreciate your
leadership on that.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Ayotte. You came before this Committee, and you and
I talked about issues with the JTTF. I raised these issues with
Director Comey of the FBI, and as I look at the background we
received on this hearing today and what happened in Garland,
Texas--in that situation you also had the FBI tracking one of
the individuals involved. The FBI sent a memo to the Garland
police and to the North Texas JTTF hours before the attack, but
that information never got to the actual patrol officers who
were there. As we talked about what happened post-Boston and
the things that needed to be communicated at the local level--
something that Chief Sparks raised as well--the question is: is
how do we stop that? The reality is that it is a patrol officer
who is likely to come upon one of these situations. The FBI is
not out roaming the streets in the way that the patrol officers
are. Where are we now with the JTTFs in terms of disseminating
that critical information to the officers? And have we improved
that? How do we get at this fundamental issue?
I was very interested that you brought up the concept of a
``coach''. Who should that ``coach'' be? Because you talked
about DNI. Right now, as I look at this system, it seems like
the FBI is the ``coach'', but we still have instances where--
whether it is a security issue or , whether it is a need-to-
know issue--the information is not getting to the front lines.
We would love to get your impression, Commissioner Davis, on
that. And we would love to get your impression as well,
Commissioner Bratton, Chief, and anyone else who wants to jump
in.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate that, and I had
a great team in Boston. It was a real team effort there.
Prior to the Boston incident, we had two special agents in
charge in Boston, Warren Bamford and Rick DesLauriers. Both of
those men were incredible partners and opened up the place to
us. We worked very closely with them. Director Comey and I have
spoken since I stepped down. I believe that the FBI wants to do
the right thing.
However, there are silos and bureaucracies involved, and
when that happens, things start to break down. And despite the
best intentions of everyone involved, it really is important
that someone is auditing the functions. Every year, the FBI
comes into the Boston Police Department and audits our motor
vehicle checks to make sure that they are all legitimate. But
who is auditing for larger issues? Who is looking at the
transfer of information----
Senator Ayotte. Is anyone doing that right now within the
Federal Government?
Mr. Davis. No, absolutely not. And so, that really needs to
happen. And I mentioned the DNI. I just think that if all
partners are equal, then the ``coach'' cannot be one of the
partners. I think that it needs to be somebody----
Senator Ayotte. Agreed. It has to be someone who is not
directly in the line of command--that is what you are saying.
Mr. Davis. Right, because then you have the same problem of
being protective of your information and it goes back to the
old issue of police wanting to make the busts themselves.
Everybody wants their own information, because if you give it
to somebody else, then you might lose the arrest.
But the other issue that you brought up, the technology
side of things, is extremely important, Senator. Going back to
the NYPD, when those two officers were killed, Baltimore had
information that was faxed--pictures were faxed from the
Baltimore police to the NYPD. The state of communication among
police agencies is really reprehensible in this day and age and
the use of these devices that Commissioner Bratton has shown
will help with that. But it needs to be a nationwide
initiative. It cannot just be department by department, because
when you set up individual protocols, you have other
communication problems.
So there are two levels that you talked about which are
extremely important, Senator.
Senator Ayotte. Commissioner Bratton, I wanted to get your
impression.
Commissioner Bratton. Prior to your arrival, I had
displayed a smartphone device that the department has
customized and will, by March, be in the hands of every one of
the 36,000 New York City police officers. It is a model and a
device that can be shared with American law enforcement--and it
was developed very specifically after the murder of our two
officers--because the messaging--the traditional messaging--the
length of time that it took to get information out to the field
was too long. And in any event, even as the information arrived
in New York, it would have been too late to save the lives of
those two officers.
With this instant messaging now, I can instantly send out
an alert to 36,000 officers. I can override everything else
that they are doing and indicate that this is a terrorist alert
or that there is a ``threat on your life'' alert, and the
capability can effectively be expanded nationwide with the
coordination and collaboration of capabilities. So we are
moving in this direction thanks to technology.
On the issues of collaboration and leadership, we are very
fortunate with the leadership of Director Comey, who
Commissioner Davis and I have had extensive involvement with.
He is going to be around for about 8 years, and that is
essential, because in our world, people come and go very
quickly. He is committed to this. He is trusted by us. He is
committed to the idea of information sharing, and the
relationship that we have in New York City with our FBI is a
direct result of his leadership, indicating that the FBI will
get along with the NYPD. And the commitment on my end is that
the NYPD will get along with the FBI. And this is essential.
So the benefit that we have at this time is that the
technology is becoming available--and I think that I would
argue that the leadership's support of collaborative
relationships is also available and will be around for a while.
Senator Ayotte. Thank you. And, I think that as you think
about resources, this would be worthy of a national investment.
Commissioner Bratton. I think so.
Senator Ayotte If you think about both the terrorism and
law enforcement contexts, this would be a huge protection
measure for the country.
I wanted to follow up. You mentioned forfeiture briefly,
Commissioner Bratton. Recently, in the end-of-the-year budget
deal, one of the things that was grabbed was over $1 billion in
forfeiture money.
Commissioner Bratton. Which is a major mistake and
something that we resent tremendously.
Senator Ayotte. Yes, so that is why I am asking you about
it. As I look at what my police officers are doing and what my
law enforcement in New Hampshire is doing with the forfeiture
money, it is obvious that we did some really important things--
increasing funding for first responders and funding to combat
the heroin epidemic facing my State. On the other hand, I think
that people around here are not understanding the value of
forfeiture resources and the consequences of taking the
forfeiture resources that help address the problems for our
first responders.
So I just wanted to put that on the record and make sure
that people understand here. We have to turn this around. We
should not do this again. These resources are critical to first
responders.
Commissioner Bratton. These smartphone devices could not
have been bought without $160 million of forfeiture money from
my local district attorney's asset forfeiture fund. It did not
come from the Federal Government, fortunately, because it is no
longer there.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Ayotte.
Two points. I do not think that anybody has asked to have
the BENS Report entered into the record.\1\ I will do so,
without objection.
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\1\ The BENS Report referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 64.
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I actually circled your comment about auditing, and I would
really like to work with you, Commissioner Davis, to develop a
way to audit so that it is a positive thing as opposed to being
viewed negatively. But I would encourage any colleague to work
with me on that. I turned around to my staff and said that that
is a piece of legislation that we should work on as a result of
this hearing. Senator McCaskill.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL
Senator McCaskill. Thank you. It is an honor to be here in
front of all of you. I am still in uniform withdrawal from my
days as a prosecutor. So it is terrific to be with all of you,
and one of my specializations, Ms. Kerr, was arson prosecution.
So I spent a lot of time with fire chiefs also.
A few months ago, I introduced a bill--and I want to
emphasize this--that would not end any Federal programs for
local law enforcement and would not cut any funding for local
law enforcement. One of the things that Mr. Davis touched on in
his testimony which is profoundly important is that a
discussion over whether law enforcement is too militarized or
does not have enough resources is really irrelevant if you do
not have the trust of your community. I do not need to lecture
you guys on how important it is, in terms of the rule of law in
this country, that people have trust that law enforcement is,
in fact, going to be fair, trained, and competent.
So, one of the things that we did in carefully drafting
this bill was to make sure that we did not cut it--we did not
eliminate programs--but we talked a lot to the National
Tactical Officers National Association (NTOA) and worked with
them on the language of the bill. Then, basically, the bill
requires States to establish certain minimum training
requirements for any officer with decisionmaking authority on
the deployment of SWAT--necessitating that SWAT members attend
some kind of training.
I believe that most States are already in compliance with
this. Most States do require some kind of SWAT training. But I
would ask you all to comment on whether you think--in light of
the $1 billion in Federal resources that are going to State and
local law enforcement--that requiring some kind of minimal
training, through language that was helped to be drafted by the
National Tactical Officers Association, is a reasonable thing
for the Federal Government to do. Mr. Bratton?
Commissioner Bratton. I can speak to that and speak
strongly in support of it. Training is absolutely essential for
SWAT entities or for any police officer function. And the trust
that you are talking about, let us face it, we have a crisis of
confidence in the American criminal justice system at the
moment. It is not just police any longer. That has been the
focus for most of the last 30 years. It now goes to grand
juries, it now goes to prosecutors, and it now goes to judges.
Every element of the criminal justice system is now under
attack because there has been a diminution of trust. We can get
it back, but it is going to require standards and it is going
to require training. Training is the heart and soul of it all--
for SWAT teams in particular. It cannot be just an odd
assortment of people coming together equipped with heavy
weaponry. They need to constantly train together and they need
to basically adhere to standards. The organization that you
referred to has very significant standards for what they would
want their members to be capable of achieving.
Senator McCaskill. Does anybody have a problem with the
Federal Government establishing some kind of minimal standards
of training for the deployment of SWAT resources that have been
given to State and local governments by the Federal Government?
OK.
Commissioner Bratton. I think that you are talking about
two different issues. One issue is the equipment that has been
given to them relative to the standards set for them--because
the equipment issue is one that is the subject of great debate
at the moment, as you know--the type of equipment given, how it
is being utilized, and the lack of standards as to how it
should be utilized. So there are several different issues.
Senator McCaskill. That is what this bill would do. This
bill would say that, if you are going to get this type of
equipment from the Federal Government, you would be required--
--
Commissioner Bratton. As to how it should be utilized, how
it should be----
Senator McCaskill [continuing]. To have a program in place
that would require training. The notion is that we would no
longer--because what we discovered--we discovered a number of
things after Ferguson in a hearing that we had in this
Committee. One was that of the three programs--the DHS program,
the Byrne grant program, and the 1033 program of the Department
of Defense (DOD)--the leaders of those three programs sat in
your chairs and they had never met each other before. They had
never met each other before that day, which was jaw-dropping to
me. We also learned that there was a proportionality issue,
where we had little-bitty, tiny departments getting Mine
Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) that had been in a
shed for years. We had little-bitty, tiny departments getting
way more military weapons than there were even sworn officers
in their departments. There did not seem to be any rhyme or
rationale regarding need and whether or not those communities
were equipped to handle that equipment. Yes, Mr. Sparks?
Chief Sparks. I guess that I want to touch on this in two
respects. Being a smaller community, we have a couple of
members of our department that are on a countywide SWAT team.
But our officers--we do not have the luxury that some of the
larger cities have. We do not have regional SWAT teams. So if
we respond to an active shooter incident, it is going to be
patrol officers responding. And when you are talking about the
equipment needed, they need at least long guns--they need
tactical rifles. They need, obviously, their ballistic vests.
But it would be nice to have ballistic shields and helmets--not
that they are worn, but that they are in those squad cars,
because, by the time a SWAT team arrives, that incident is
over. And, the quicker that we can get the appropriate
equipment to our patrol officers, the better--because they will
be the ones there. It is not going to be a SWAT team. And it is
going to be a significant amount of time before we actually get
people who are SWAT trained or people who have the tactical
equipment there to respond. So, if we are not equipping our
frontline officers--all of our officers on SWAT team are
trained. In fact, we have seven officers in our department that
are SWAT trained. And we also do a lot of additional training
as far as active shooter incidents. But they are not all SWAT
team members. And across America, the majority are going to be
patrol officers who need that equipment.
Senator McCaskill. Right. Well, that is why I want to make
sure--I mean, I think that one of the reasons we wanted to do
this is to make sure that your department gets that equipment
that you need and not five Ballistic Engineered Armored
Response Counter Attack Trucks (BearCats) or five MRAPs that
were not even ever designed to run on city streets in the first
place. I guess that that is the argument that I am making,
getting your department, Mr. Sparks, what you need in light of
who your personnel are and what your demands are. None of that
was going on with these Federal programs. There was nobody
checking, there was no reporting back, and there was no--they
could not even tell me if the equipment was being used in the
various communities that were getting it--especially the DOD.
Once it was out the door, they were done.
I have been a little disappointed that there has not been
more robust support for the bill because I think that law
enforcement is in a little bit of a defensive crouch, and there
was a sense that well, if you open this up, then maybe somebody
will take the programs away. I am not going to let anybody--I
do not want anybody to take the programs away. I have seen how
they work. I know that they are important. I do think that a
little bit of tweaking in terms of proportionality and training
is probably the order of the day--and I would certainly
appreciate you all taking a look at the legislation and seeing
your way through to let us know if there are any problems that
you see with it that we need to fix, which we are willing to
do. On the other hand, it would be helpful if we could get more
folks--I think that people are just afraid of doing anything
and worried that it is going to take something away. I would
like to see us get beyond that, if possible.
Thank you all very much.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator McCaskill.
We really could go on and on. There are so many questions.
But what I would like to do is give everybody an opportunity to
just make a final comment--please keep it somewhat brief--
before we close out the hearing. We will go in reverse order.
Mr. Ghilarducci.
Mr. Ghilarducci. All right. Well, great. Again, thank you
very much for the opportunity to speak with you.
This has been a fascinating discussion, and I think that it
just presented the challenges that we continue to face. The
threat continues to change. Your support, the support of the
Federal Government to State and local governments, is
absolutely critical. And you started off, Senator, saying the
percentage of funding that is really made available is
minuscule compared to what the need is. California, since 2008,
has lost $150 million in homeland security funds. We need to
reverse that trend and we need to put resources into our
communities to get us to where we need to be.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. We need to prioritize spending.
Commissioner Davis.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you for your attention to this
issue, Senator. I just truly believe that this threat has
created a theater of war, domestically--and we need to address
it like that--the geographic distribution of these pieces of
equipment, not to each individual small town, but
geographically, so that they can be called in, if necessary.
But the bottom line is--and it goes to the last question
that was asked--that the balance between the militarization of
policing and the community policing that we all want in our
communities requires strong leadership on the part of Chief
Sparks, Commissioner Bratton, and other people who are in those
positions across the Nation. They have to keep pushing not to
allow that military mentality to take over, remembering that we
are there to keep the peace--not just to arrest people.
Thank you, Senator.
Chairman Johnson. Chief Kerr.
Chief Kerr. Thank you, and I appreciate the invitation. I
just want to remind all of you that the title of this hearing
is ``Frontline Response to Terrorism in America.'' I encourage
you not to forget about the part and the role that is played by
the fire service and EMS. We realize that there is funding
needed to help our law enforcement partners, but I encourage
you all to make sure that we do not forget and ignore the fire
service and EMS.
Just one comment on what Commissioner Bratton talked about
regarding his device right here that he keeps holding up and
the information that they can get from that. Imagine the
information that can go to every first responder in America
through a smartphone or a smart device--and that really is part
of what FirstNet is about--transmitting data to make sure that
a first responder who goes into a house to help somebody that
has a seizure where the man sits up and shoots the first
responder in the chest, that if that first responder had
information, that this person had behavioral issues prior to
going into that house, then the first responder may still be
alive today.
So, it is important that we are really taking care of our
first responders who are taking care of our community--whether
they are law enforcement, fire, or EMS.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Commissioner Bratton.
Commissioner Bratton. Thank you. Well, the issue of concern
here is terrorism on the front lines, and I will go to Senator
Booker's comment about duality. It is quite clear that we are
losing more lives through traditional crime in this country,
and at the same time, we are very concerned about the potential
for losing more lives to terrorism.
The benefit that we have is the duality, the idea that
while combating one, we can combat the other. So, the
technology that we have referenced and the collaboration that
we have referenced, that means that you--who have to make the
funding decisions as it relates to this issue, terrorism and
crime--can get double the bang for the buck. That smartphone
that I held up works for terrorism notifications, as well as
fire coordination notifications, as well as for crime
prevention.
Similarly, so much of what we have talked about, in terms
of interoperability, the device that works for conveying data
for terrorism works for conveying data about a fire or a life-
saving emergency. So we do benefit, at this particular time,
that there is the duality of concern about crime, which takes
more lives, and the growing potential of more lives being taken
by terrorism. Actually by solving one, we can solve the other.
Chairman Johnson. Chief Sparks.
Chief Sparks. I just want to touch on--when it comes to
priority and the funding, we need to make sure that all of the
departments out there at least have the basic level of training
for active shooter response. It is critical. There are a lot of
small communities that still do not have that. So, if we can
funnel that through on criteria that gets it out to those local
agencies, then that would be great.
And then, we can encourage the cooperation among these
small agencies, because they are not going to be responding on
their own, so that means getting people within counties to
actually work together and train together.
And then, regarding the information sharing, we have to
break down some of those silos--and some of the policies are
inhibiting that free flow of information.
And the last point that I really want to talk about--and
you talked about law enforcement in general as taking a hit--in
my community, since a lot of these incidents have occurred, it
is just the opposite. The outpouring of support has been
phenomenal and the community trusts the department. And I think
that it is important for you to recognize that these high-
profile incidents do not define who law enforcement is. We have
people on the front line that are willing to put their lives on
the line--and do not lose sight of that, because it is that
local police officer, in whatever community it is, who is going
to be the one charging in there when an incident occurs--and
they deserve a little more respect.
Senator Carper. Can I say something?
Chairman Johnson. Sure.
Senator Carper. Before we close, I just want to thank
Senator Heitkamp and Senator Baldwin, again, not just for
suggesting this as a topic for a hearing, but also for you and
your staffs, and for our staffs, who collaborated in inviting
all of you to come. And you were a terrific panel--and I said
this to the Chairman. And we generally have very good panels--
but you guys are terrific, and we are grateful, not only for
your service, but also for what you have done here in conveying
this information in very helpful ways.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Carper, I mentioned this earlier.
Go to the YouTube page and look at the dashcam video from those
first responders responding to the Sikh temple shooting. Take a
look at the pictures of those first responders walking up the
stairs of the World Trade Center. We see the service and the
sacrifice.
I want to thank all of you for your time, for putting
together this very thoughtful testimony, for your answers to
our questions, but really thank you for your service to your
communities, to your States, and to this Nation. Truly, I think
everybody on this panel would certainly agree with that and
approve that message. Correct?
Senator Carper. I am Tom Carper, and I approve this
message. [Laughter.]
Chairman Johnson. So, with that, the hearing record will
remain open for 15 days--and, by the way, I think that you can
probably expect some questions for the record, and we would
appreciate your responses to those.
The record will be held open until February 17th at 5 p.m.
for the submission of statements and questions for the record.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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