Napolitano Warns Police Chiefs About Evolving Terrorism and Domestic Extremism

(CNSNews.com) - America faces a "constantly changing" terrorism threat that includes expanding partnerships among al Qaeda-inspired terrorist groups, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"More and more, we are seeing a homegrown extremism being an issue," she said.

"The terrorist threat to our nation is as busy as it has been since anytime prior 911. The difference is that instead of one al Qaeda group, we now have many al Qaeda groups or al Qaeda-inspired groups, including for example AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], which has been centered in Yemen, which has been one the busiest ones in terms of attempts on the United States since I have been secretary."

In a speech to members of the International Association of Chiefs of Police's (IACP), Napolitano said law enforcement agencies in the United States "have to change and evolve" along with the terrorism threat that the country now faces.

She also called for a new type of "security architecture" that includes the proper resources and information sharing "to make sure that we are minimizing the risk that one of these attacks or attempted attacks will succeed," and "maximizing our ability to cut something off before it has a chance to succeed and we are involving more people in that process."

This new kind of "security architecture" should involve the government, law enforcement, the private sector, and citizens alike, Napolitano told the IACP on Wednesday, because it will increase the amount of information available to help prevent an attack inside U.S. borders.



Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Napolitano said "al Qaeda-inspired groups" are not necessarily taking orders from the "core al Qaeda."

"Instead, it's the process of a shared violent extremist ideology -- ideology in the name of a very warped sense of Islam, but aimed at the West and aimed at the United States as part of the attacks on the West," said Napolitano.

The DHS secretary highlighted her department's "If You See Something, Say Something" initiative as an effective program to involve private citizens to report terrorism signs and other threats to law enforcement officials.

She also underscored DHS's ongoing collaboration with federal agencies such as the FBI in countering violent extremism through the federal government's Joint Terrorism Task Force.



A girl walks past a wall with graffiti about the al-Qaida network in a Muslim area of the northern city of Kano, Nigeria. (AP File Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

Napolitano also talked about DHS working with state and local law enforcement to combat violent extremism by expanding and strengthening the 72 fusion centers currently established throughout the country.

According to the DHS Web site, "State and major urban fusion centers serve as focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners."

"Located in states and major urban areas throughout the country, fusion centers are uniquely situated to empower front-line law enforcement, public safety, fire service, emergency response, public health, CIKR protection, and private sector security personnel to understand local implications of national intelligence, thus enabling local officials to better protect their communities," according to DHS.

"We have now established baseline criteria for all fusion centers," Napolitano told the IACP. "We have now surveyed all fusion centers to see whether they meet that baseline criterion."

"What they are designed to do is to facilitate the information gathering and sharing process back and forth as I described for terrorism, tactics, techniques, [and] behaviors," she said, "but also other crimes, trans-national crime in particular. And we also have found that you can use them for other hazards as well," such as pandemics and industrial accidents, she added.

Napolitano commended the IACP for their commitment to train 58,000 law enforcement officials to recognize behaviors and signs related to terrorism and to expand information sharing, among other things, through the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative.

The DHS secretary's comments came during the IACP's Division of State and Provincial Police Mid-Year Conference in Alexandria, Va., just outside the nation's capital.

Napolitano did not mention border security despite the DHS's ongoing 287 (g) program that delegates federal immigration law enforcement authority to sate and local law agents in over 70 U.S. jurisdictions.

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• Warns
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• Evolving
• Terrorism
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• Domestic
• Extremism

[hansjalv]

Dislike!!!!

[afracturedskull]

This is the spokeswoman for the police state fails to mention that her paranoid department considers ron paul supporters and norse god worshippers potential terrorists. Your losing your grip on your misinformation campaign bitch, be prepared to step down soon.

[hawkdreaming]

i just threw up all over my computer.. ^+o^

[cloisterene]

Those FEMA camps are just right, for locking up every one of the Nazis who are running this country right now. How convenient, lol. They are UN-American; who needs the traitors? Not I...

[cloisterene]

Janet Napolitano is herself the *worst terrorist* we have to fear. She is very paranoid about US citizens *criticizing* her, because she *knows* she's a criminal. She is an accomplished hoodlum. Mafia. She's not a woman, either, that is another fraud. She's a male eunuch, a transvestite drag queen / lover of *boys*. The authorities, medical establishment, judges & lawyers are all *corrupt*, which is the reason why nothing is being done about THEIR fascist-Nazi lawbreaking. Arrest all of them.

[HoneySiegalSurvivor]

@winngrider We The People Against Corruption in the Campaign to Remove and Indict Obama et al day 271 Monday March 28th/2011.

Both Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama engaged in fraud against me. Bank fraud. Decedent's trust which is the Federal Reserve of the Department of the Treasury. NWO CROOKED ATTORNEYS.

Honey Siegal

Janet violating constitutional amendment 4 on a mass scale now and Obama an illegal ? Muslim? who put us into any war unconstitutionally and is purposely bankrupting the USA.

[winngrider]

Lets hope that next year the American people are smart enough to get this Nazi and

her leader King Obama bin laden out of office.

[Oceanno69]

@HoneySiegalSurvivor You got that Right. Leave the front door wide open and then grope and radiate We

" The People". We are living in backwards Times. No Common Sense at ALL. Yes 911 was an Inside JOB!

[HoneySiegalSurvivor]

Janet Napolitano let in millions of illegals thru the Mexican borders in order to build projects for Gold Creek Inc. of which she granted money from the State of Arizona. "Warped state of Islam" my ass. She is a crooked attorney moneylaundering the estate of Honey R. Siegal for the real mastermind of 911.

We The People Against Corruption in the Campaign to Remove and Indict Obama and Janet Napolitano day 268 March 25/2011.

The State of Arizona made HONEY SIEGAL DECEASED. for her to steal my $