Preventing Ideological Violence

Communities, Police and Case Studies of "Success"

P. Daniel Silk, Basia Spalek, Mary O'Rawe

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137290373
• eBook ISBN: 9781137290380
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents the voices of police and community members who have been involved in engagement and partnership projects designed for countering violent extremism. Though the threat of the so-called Islamic State garners a great deal of current attention, the book explores ideological violence prevention efforts in a number of contexts, to include that of paramilitary organizations as well as Qa'ida inspired actors.

PART I

1

THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES AND POLICE IN PREVENTING IDEOLOGICAL VIOLENCE: CONSIDERING THE LITERATURE, POLICIES, AND POTENTIAL

Mary O’Rawe, P. Daniel Silk, and Basia Spalek

EXPLORING THE PARAMETERS

Engagement and partnership are complex concepts. When applied to preventing concerns such as “terrorism” or “ideologically driven violence,” especially in the context of community policing strategies, they become even more so. This book, through including the voices of both academics and practitioners, seeks to simultaneously address current practices in this field and explore the effect of straightforward conceptualizations of some of the terms related to and underpinning such practices. This is not done to add obfuscation to an area that is already sufficiently challenging. Instead, it is designed to highlight the fact that there are foundational questions that require philosophical consideration before we can launch into examples of “success.” Policing, community policing, terrorism, and counterterrorism are all ideas largely accepted as “understood” in their common usage in modern society, yet they can also be dangerously imprecise in both application and discussion. The ambiguities, nuances, and, on occasion, diametrically opposed positions that may be adopted in relation to these terms deserve further consideration; this chapter begins that analysis.

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Power of Terminology

“Terrorism” itself has been notoriously difficult to define in universally accepted terms (e.g., LaFree and Ackerman 2009; Schmid and Jongman 1988; 2005). Indeed, within the United States alone, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense all have their own distinct definitions (United States General Accounting Office 2003), and Perry (2003) has enumerated 22 separate definitions or descriptions of terrorism at the federal level. Definitions have also shifted in legislation over time, with all manner of previously legitimate activity coming increasingly within a proscriptive statutory purview (e.g., the UK “Terrorism Act 2000”; “United and Strengthening America” or “USAPATRIOT Act of 2001”). In this complex and contested arena, all involved—practitioners and commentators alike—use vocabulary to describe terrorism and counterterrorism efforts as if they were clear-cut, rather than moving, shifting, evolving, and, above all, context dependent.

Disagreements and polarized positions regarding the rights and wrongs of ideologically motivated violence, not to mention what terrorism is (and therefore, who the terrorists are), are not confined to the legal, policy, or academic domains. It is trite logic to suggest that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” but even this slogan reflects a real-world complexity that has direct application in joint police-community endeavors to prevent ideological violence. Who is right and who is wrong is not always simple, and should not be assumed to be so. Even in terms of trying to document consistency of viewpoints over time, yesterday’s pariah, against whom counterterrorism methods were adopted and applauded, can become tomorrow’s dignitary or statesman (see examples in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, and Iraq)—and this phenomenon can also work in reverse.

Given the extent and depth of differing opinions and positions, mainstream terrorism studies tend to consider terrorism fairly myopically, as something perpetrated almost exclusively by nonstate actors. As Spalek et al. (2008, 15) point out:

[W]ithin counter-terrorism arenas, research has often been dominated by state-centric perspectives founded on secondary sources and lacking the input of primary data collection and analysis. For this reason, traditional terrorism studies has been criticised for being analytically and methodologically weak, relying too heavily on secondary information and failing to understand terrorism and counter-terrorism not only through the perspectives and experiences of practitioners, but also through those experiencing state repression. (Breen-Smyth 2007; Jackson 2007)

However attractive, one-dimensional views of terrorism and counterterrorism that fail to consider the complexity of multiple experiences and conflicted realities serve a minimized purpose. For our purposes here, the related phenomenon of the “securitization” of particular issues at certain points in history, leading to the creation of “suspect communities” (e.g., Hillyard 1993), is also important, well documented, and of concern. However, insufficient attention is still paid to understanding the causes of violence and what lies behind support for (or rejection of) certain types of violence over others (Žižak 2008; Gilligan 2000; Boyle 2012).

It is clear, both in the jurisdictions under study in this book and elsewhere that societies, groups, and individuals can harbor inconsistent and even hypocritical views as to which types of violence and related views are acceptable. Dominant power groups in society will continue to determine which views of violence and violent crime “matter” the most, and which should be prioritized for action. Police personnel face this type of quandary when political influence is exerted on them to address one criminal issue over another, as do communities who witness state efforts to address one type of crime, while another appears to receive scant attention. These examples, however, only hint at the philosophical complexity that is attached to this issue. Gilligan (2000) argues that the key difference between criminal violence as opposed to other, sometimes state-sanctioned, violent behavior is only differentiated by what governments declare illegal—while motives and means may be the same in both instances. However difficult it may be to consider, there may be something to be learned from Gilligan’s point, even if only to underline that dominant theories of crime, violence, and fault are far from universal, and may, on further exploration, prove at many levels to be counterproductive in terms of any overarching aim to diminish violence in our societies.

Within this framework, the kinds of violence projected as most problematic by governments, media, and other commentators tend to be subjective rather than objective, structural, or systemic (Žižak 2008). Fear is manipulated at many levels (Hamber 2006), to ensure focus remains on state-defined wrongdoers, while less attention is paid to concerns identified by communities. This is another phenomenon that can work in reverse to posit a given state or group of states as the fount of all evil. While it may be true that democratically elected leaders in some way dictate the security priorities of the constituencies they represent—therefore representing “the people”—at the same time, communities, or sections of communities, in those same areas may actively question what receives political and police attention and why. This can apply equally, and sometimes more so, when the crime at hand is terrorism or, to use today’s terminology, violent extremism. Whether it ever helps to label someone a terrorist (and/or a “violent criminal”), and the extent to which traditional counterterrorism approaches are productive of enhanced security, rather than insecurity, are important, but generally moot points (O’Connor and Ruhmann 2005). In the end, terms such as “terrorism” and “extremism” have a hegemonic hold, and are part and parcel of the current vocabulary in the jurisdictions under study. Simply put, these are the terms that rightly or wrongly, are used at a societal level to label and categorize. So while we may appear to have little choice in whether or not we use the term “terrorist” or “fundamentalist,” we are at least obligated to question whose definitions are used and how descriptive they truly are—particularly before seeking to apply and utilize these meanings in terms of practical endeavors aimed at eradicating ideological extremist violence.

If defining terrorism is difficult, putting a precise framework around counterterrorism, much less effective counterterrorism, clearly cannot be viewed as straightforward either. This is all the more so as counterterrorism efforts have traditionally been carried out in the shadows, operating covertly, often on a strictly “need to know” basis. This can be important in terms of protecting systems, procedures, and sources, but secrecy and the dictates of clandestine practice make full spectrum understanding, accountability, and evaluation nearly impossible. Kevin McNamara, a UK member of Parliament has pinpointed some of the problems associated with a lack of transparency in the area of counterterrorism policing when it comes to trying to independently evaluate the effectiveness of intelligence collection efforts:

The upside of . . . secrecy is that terrorists might be led to believe that the intelligence agencies are all-seeing and all powerful. They do not know where the subterfuge begins and ends, how deeply agent penetration goes or what are the agencies’ objectives at any time. The downside of the policy is that we do not know either. We do not know to what extent, if at all, the agencies are overrunning ethical boundaries. There is a plethora of agencies in the field, each running agents, collecting information and conducting operations. The terrorist might be confused over who is who, but so are we, especially when something goes wrong and we want to find out who is responsible. (2002, 5)

While this concern is valid, we must also consider that an overreliance on the covert and secret runs the risk of distortion, devaluation, and diminishing proactiveness and overt engagement with the community so as to undermine the co-creation of more imaginative and effective forms of community safety.

CONSIDERING THE SHAPE OF COMMUNITY POLICING

As challenging as it may be to agree on what constitutes terrorism and effective counterterrorism, we must similarly concede that no consensus exists in the literature, either, as to what community policing is, or what is required for such policing to be effectual (e.g., MacKenzie and Henry 2009; García Chávez 2012). The US National Research Council is of the view that community policing is too nebulous a term to be evaluated empirically (National Research Council Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practices 2004).Besides this, there are disparate understandings of even the base concepts of “community” and “policing” viewed as entities in their own right. When a counterterrorism agenda is grafted onto an already fluid concept, the potential for definitional mistakes or misunderstandings multiply exponentially. This consideration is vital as the reader continues into the case studies that follow, as each of the practitioners who have contributed to this collection are, themselves, working in a gray area, where their innovation may march ahead of clearly defined government policies or academic concepts.

For some, community policing is a philosophy (Friedmann 1992), orienting police organizations toward a more outward-looking and community-responsive means of doing business (Alderson 1979; Myhill 2006; García Chávez 2012). It arguably includes any initiative or process geared to facilitate a better understanding of, and responsiveness to, community needs and/or encourage civilians to trust and cooperate with police in a joint societal policing endeavor—though on this point see MacKenzie and Henry (2009) on the importance of distinguishing between, for example, community policing, community policing “lookalikes,” and problem-oriented policing (as in Goldstein 1990).

Broadly, community policing has been framed in a variety of ways, but in general it tends to be seen as

[A] partnership between the police and the people they serve. This partnership is designed to improve the quality of life in the community through the introduction of strategies designed to enhance neighborhood solidarity and safety. It is expected that the police and citizens of the community will work together to address issues of crime and social disorganization. (Vito, Walsh, and Kunselman 2004, 2)

Put like this, what’s not to like? Community policing was, indeed, widely vaunted as the dominant policing philosophy, at least in the United States in the years leading up to 9/11, with some commentators suggesting: “Community policing could arguably be called the new orthodoxy of law enforcement in the United States” (Sadd and Grinc 1996, 1). However, more critical voices signal unresolved and often unarticulated tensions in the philosophy of community policing. To what extent might community policing be a distraction from the “real” business of policing—if that work in some way is at odds with a community-centric strategy? How much is it about recruiting a volunteer labor pool to be the eyes and ears of an overwhelmed police force, who may candidly concede they need the help? Where are the boundaries between awareness raising within a community and intelligence gathering about that same community? To what extent are such initiatives owned and subject to direction by police or government as opposed to the community? What does any of this say about whose agenda is being served and how success can be defined? How can co-option by national security programs be avoided, or encouraged, depending on the perspective of which is more desirable?

There is a sense that police rendering themselves more approachable or accessible, attending community events, and building trust with a number of community representatives will result in a payback of further trust of their organization and more information coming from a heretofore unavailable, insufficiently exploited, or reluctant source. This, in turn, is intended to make police more effective in terms of identifying, detecting, and increasingly, preventing crime (Innes 2006). However, at the same time Myhill suggests that one of the issues that must be considered when police hope to effectively take part in community engagement is “sharing power with communities,” which suggests that “engagement is not something to be done ‘to’ communities; they [the community] must participate in planning and choosing approaches and feel equal ownership of the process” (2006, vi). If police and communities are to work collaboratively on counterterrorism efforts, citizens are (or should be) equal stakeholders in the planning and process of a truly community-centered program.

What becomes clear, both from the broader literature and from the empirical research carried out for this book, is that similar kinds of methodologies are being utilized by police in this arena toward removing mystique on “both sides,” improving channels of communication with select individuals perceived as important links into broader community experience and knowledge, and ingratiating police more fully into a given community’s everyday experience. To be sure, there are many potential positive outcomes from this approach. Trust and human empathy are clearly important ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Conclusion
• Notes on Contributors