Criminal Justice

How the Events of September 11, 2001

Changed the Focus of Federal Policing

Michael Fortune Jr.

Criminal Justice 230

Professor Bragg

May 3, 2010

How the events of September 11, 2001

Changed the Focus of Federal Policing

“The focus of our nation’s national security for the next decade should be on fighting violent extremist groups such as Al-Queda and other terrorist organizations” (2008, July 31). This is a quote published in an article in the Washington Post from the current Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates. Articles like this from our nation’s leader’s gives testament to the changes that this nation has experienced due to 9/11, and how the events of September 11, 2001 have changed the focus of federal policing.

Prior to 9/11 most federal police agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were tasked with thwarting white-collar crime, cyber crimes, and civil rights violations. Still other agencies such as the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, Capitol Hill Police, and the United States Park Police were tasked with protecting their respective posts from mostly domestic threats. Intelligence agencies in United States had become very stagnant and complacent in their duties. They had become compartmentalized in their information sharing. The sharing of information with other domestic agencies was nearly non-existent. Several news outlets around the country believed that the sharing of intelligence was the main reason 9/11 was successful. One popular claim that was made by these various news outlets reads as follows, “It's conventional wisdom that the legal "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement was one of the reasons we failed to prevent 9/11.” The 9/11 Commission responded to this claim as follows, “"The information sharing failures in the summer of 2001 were not the result of legal barriers but of the failure of...