 This is ComNet. The security and network training initiative in the National Education Laboratory's goal is to provide free cybersecurity training to public safety personnel nationwide. David Kluu continues his look at the Sentinel project and tracked two of their program, the Incident Handling and Response Course. State medical assistance teams are designed to respond during a medical event where local resources are overwhelmed. ComNet visited the North Carolina S-MAT and spoke with members of the team to learn about this valuable resource. The Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology offers some unique classes on the response to explosive devices. Stacey Phillips continues her report on these classes with a look at the Incident Response to Terrorist Bombings Course. The Department of Homeland Security, Office of Grants and Training is sponsoring anti-terrorism training and a law enforcement program titled Leading from the Front, Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness for the Law Enforcement Executives. Diane Roberts went to Hamilton, Ohio to see the training in action. ComNet is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Preparedness Directorate's Office of Grants and Training and their Preparedness Network. Coming to you from the facilities of the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute at St. Petersburg College. Here are Al Rochelle and Jennifer Holloway. Hello and welcome to ComNet. This program presents weapons of mass destruction related awareness information for the nation's civilian and military response communities. ComNet is being distributed over government and commercial information networks and is being streamed over the World Wide Web at terrorism.spcollege.edu. We invite you to visit the NTPI website for further details on the information provided during today's program. Continuing education units can be earned for viewing ComNet programs. To register for CEUs, go to the NTPI website and click on the Continuing Education Units link under Training. This link will take you through the registration process and the login process. Now after you log in, you'll be able to view program videos, take the program exam, and fill out an evaluation form. With an exam grade of 75% or better, you will immediately receive an online CEU certificate. And after viewing ComNet, please complete a viewer evaluation of the program. Your input and comments are very important to us. The Security and Network Training Initiative and the National Education Laboratory provides free cybersecurity training public safety personnel nationwide. David Clue continues his look at the Sentinel Project and tracked two of their program, the Incident Handling and Response Course. The cyber attacks against our nation's public works, communication and computer networks are on the rise. Yet most first responders don't have the skills to properly respond to and handle these attacks until now. The Sentinel program, the name actually stands for Security and Network Training Initiative and National Education Laboratory. It's a combination effort. Number one, we have a very in-depth security training curriculum and protocol that we use and teach with different students across the country dealing with cybersecurity and cyberterrorism awareness. The second piece of the program is our National Education Laboratory. We have two 35-unit mobile training labs that are fully encompassed within a variety of different travel cases and the like so we're able to actually pack up, take the course to the students at a variety of locations across the country. Tell me who's involved and what their role has been in this. Well certainly the Department of Homeland Security is the instrumental driving force in the funding agency. The Office of Domestic Preparedness is an agency that's funding and continues to support the effort. It's something we feel very pleased. They've been very supportive. They not only help us with the curriculum and design and funding, they also help us with the allocation of students to attend. Each state actually has a designated point of contact. We work with that point of contact to help identify, select and recruit students to come to the course based on the level of need and the quality of the student and what's its role in this. Sure, the University of Arkansas system, the National Center for Law Enforcement Criminal Justice Institute is actually a campus of the University of Arkansas system. We actually came in through a competitive grand announcement in 2004. We were awarded the funding to be in the project and we have certainly taken on and gone from there. Cyber security is becoming more prominent. Obviously by Homeland Security reacting as they have with funding this project and others like it, they're starting to realize this is a big issue and not getting smaller. So yeah, it is a very small initial step toward what needs to be a greater effort to try and combat the problem. Cyber security training is not only important in preparing for and combating cyber attacks but for responding to them as well. Identity theft, revenue loss and even disruption of public works and communication systems are just a few of the incidents first responders may be called on to handle. The identity theft mechanism is a huge and growing problem. Certain universities have been compromised. We have seen verified FBI reports that a single university was penetrated. Alumni databases were actually accessed and over 120,000 records from alumni were stolen including name, address, and social security. Frightening stuff. There's a tremendous amount of sensitive information stored for obvious reasons within a police department. You add to that the dimension that we are also a college and we have access to a lot of other information that deals with student lives and things like that. It's heavily guarded and heavily censured so a hack into our system would be a gateway into theirs and that's something we don't even want to contemplate. What is it about cyber security that makes this kind of program necessary A and B important? Any type of crime that would typically be done on a site can now be done remotely using the internet. You no longer have to break into the bank vault per se to steal funds. Money is sent all over the world electronically. Websites are up that are offering any type of material or product you want to buy for sale so so many things are vulnerable and the awareness level has not met this incredible boom of technology that's taking place. As a result our law enforcement agencies are being inundated with requests to have a breach. Can you send someone to respond? Many local agencies are not capable of responding they don't have the technical know-how the skill set, the personnel to properly respond to that type of event. As a result the trail grows cold much more quickly than it would with a typical crime. What's the real advantage to speed in responding to a cyber attack? Speed is essential because what happens in most cyber attacks that's really different from other criminal acts is that over time data is overwritten in preservation of that data preservation of evidence is essential in the attempts of law enforcement to solve the crime. That's why one thing we teach in the instant handling and response course is preservation of evidence. We provide the resources of the steps that individuals should use to preserve their evidence. The Sentinel project currently offers two courses to help first responders and other individuals involved in domestic terrorism handle cyber attacks. One of the courses incident handling and response deals with two primary issues network monitoring and intrusion detection. In addition the course also focuses on law collection and analysis technical forensics and internal breach response. The incident handling and response course is much more in depth much more hands-on. What we're dealing with there is that an attack has occurred. What are we going to do? What steps can we take? It's a more advanced user. We expect more out of our students in our incident handling and response course. The prerequisite is an individual with computer experience that we deem as advanced network manager types. We use more of what's called a blended learning approach. What it is is it's half lecture, half hands-on and we really focus on the hands-on things. And the reason why we do that is because that's where the students learn. That's where they begin to say I can do this. I can better protect my agency and my organization. We give them tools to do that. We take them through how to use different software packages such as Snort which is an intrusion detection system software. Hands-on is always important. Depending on what kind of learner you are but most computer learners are tactile. They're going to have to get on the computer. You can't explain to how to run a program if you don't have the program in front of you. What hands-on experiences are they getting? What's happening that they're getting to use what they're hearing in what would be otherwise a real-world situation? What they do is we give them scenarios. We say this is happening. This is happening on your network. What are you going to do using this piece of software? Our instructors take them through almost like a tutorial. This is how you use Snort. This is how you use the piece of software. This is how it's helpful. Now, here's your scenario. This is occurring on your network. What are you going to do? We let them do it. We want to increase awareness from what's going on. If they're the agency contacted when they get the call, they need to be able to intelligently respond, okay, that sounds like a virus. That sounds like a worm or trojan. Or that sounds like an actual cyber attack that's being launched against you. Here are some initial steps you can do. To number one, solve the problem. To number two, preserve the evidence until someone arrives to actually respond and investigate more thoroughly. You don't just come in and turn everything off. I can't go to a bank and say, I think you've been hacked. Will you take all of your transaction servers off-line for the next week until I figure out what to do about it? There's a lot of business. There's a real detailed and critical process that you have to follow to make sure not only do you recover from it, but you also maintain and preserve the evidence so that you can properly backtrack who committed the transaction so you can eventually prosecute. So it's more of an awareness and a hands-on training mechanism that we bring to play for the different agencies. We also did with some pre-planning aspects with that also because we want them to understand that yes, we're giving you the tools after an attack, but the most important thing you can do for your organization is to have policies in place that will help you prevent an attack from occurring. But understand that an attack will occur. What are you going to do after an attack occurs? That's the whole point of the instant handling and response course. We give them tools that are freely available or are already even available within an operating system that they may not be aware of they can use to perform a particular task. And by performing that task, it can better combat or prevent they have to self-teach themselves after they go. We simply provide resources for them whether it be web resources, textbooks. We're also a resource. We provide them with contact information so that they can get back with us and say, hey, I have this issue. How can you help us? That's what we're for. That's what our staff of the Sentinel Project is for. To provide them with all the tools necessary for them to do their job better. With this class, there's a lot of art involved in it. It gives you enough to know whether you're out of your league or not. To know what you should do, what you shouldn't do. And especially in teaching first response to some kind of computer crime, it helps you also relay to other officers that this is what you do and don't do. One of the things that I want to do for IT professionals is make sure that a lot of the stuff that they have suggested be implemented just to make sure that the overall college's computer systems, both LAN and wireless are where they should be as far as security conscious and back door hacking, that kind of thing. The agency or member of an agency that watches this and says, okay, I'm ready, sign me up. What do they need to do? The first step would be our website net. We have a fairly comprehensive overview of the two courses, what the prerequisites for the course and also the registration process. We have done our best to identify all the future training sites, the cities. They can identify what might be best suited for them, what their nearest location would be. If you fill that in, send us the registration form via fax. You can call us on our 800 number which is listed on the site or send us an email. We'll be happy to respond and set them up and get them registered for any class. Exactly. How much is this going to cost the student? Absolutely free of charge. We reimburse mileage, we reimburse per diem. No food costs. Again, if the agency will just give us the person for five days, no charge to either the student or the agency will give them after those five days a more developed, more skilled and more educated student to better handle their network and other intrusions that might occur on other networks where they might respond. All education helps police officers. However, when we can get the quality we have here and from the federal government, it helps small agencies immensely because of their small budget. They have usually zero training budget and when you can get invited to places in classes like this, we try and take as much advantage and everyone should take as much advantage as they can. Definitely recommend the course. It is definitely one of those things where sitting down, doing hands on, to have all that available to you and to be able to sit there and when you run into snags and problems, have someone who can tell you where you went wrong, what you need to do. It is highly recommended, definitely worth it. Real world, hands on training to battle an invisible enemy that can shut down your operations in an instant. You can get it and the resources of the Department of Homeland Security through the Sentinel Project. With the increased threat of cyber attacks against our nation's infrastructures, the need for personnel that are trained to effectively combat cyber terrorism is on the rise. Programs like the Sentinel Project offer these public safety officials the training they'll need to respond to a cyber attack. Up next, what's coming up on the next live response. In 1996, the emergency management assistance compact was established. Since then, it's been tested many times and stands today as the cornerstone of mutual aid throughout the country. On the next live response, we'll look at the emergency management assistance compact and show how it allows for a quick response to disasters. Live response airs Wednesday, May 24th at 2pm eastern. For more information on viewing, make sure to register online at terrorism.spcollege.edu. State medical assistance teams are designed to respond during a medical event where local resources are overwhelmed. Comnet visited the North Carolina S-MAT and spoke with members of the team to learn about this valuable resource. If a hospital in North Carolina should be destroyed by either a terrorist event or a natural disaster tomorrow and our field hospital was capable to come in and set up in that community, look at the advantages of not disrupting the population and that facility could be set up right there and be functional in a very short period of time. With the great knowledge of terrorism and the very real need for preparedness, the state of North Carolina has renewed its commitment to strengthen its capacity to respond to a terrorist attack. The state medical assistance teams, or S-MAT, play an important role in this preparedness. We saw that in the event of a disaster, man-made or natural, that local resources were going to be overwhelmed within the first six to eight hours of an event from time of request. So there was no buffer zone between that timeframe. These regional teams provide that patient care backfill stability from six hours post-event to 72 hours until we can get federal resources in. And that's where the state medical assistance teams come into play. These S-MATs have the ability to assist with medical surge during an emergency and are designed in three distinct levels. There is a level three team, which is mass decon capability and some some mass casualty equipment. For about 50 patients they're based out of local EMS agencies throughout the state. It's primarily EMTs and paramedics within the EMS agency, firefighters, hazmat technicians, and there are currently 29 S-MAT type three teams. Then there's a regional team, which is an S-MAT state medical assistance team type two, which is a team here in southeastern North Carolina. They are a have the same WMD mass decon capabilities. They're also primary mission is establishing a mobile field hospital, 40 bed field hospital or alternate care facility anywhere within North Carolina. And since there are eight of those teams you can intermix any of those number teams to create the size of facility you need. You have anything from plan operation, support staff through paramedics, physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, lab technicians, anybody within that you normally have in the hospital make up these teams. Then there's a S-MAT type one team. They have a 150 bed portable facility and that is their capabilities. They still have WMD mass decon and they can provide an in-state resource for a functional 150 bed facility. Theoretically, three regional type two teams are the same equivalent of a S-MAT one. Numerous local, state and regional agencies have collaborated in this preparedness effort. Recently four agencies joined this undertaking. They include the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services, the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, the North Carolina Division of Public Health Epidemiology and Communicable Disease and the Special Operations Response Team. In August of 1998, North Carolina passed a law establishing Regional Advisory Committees or RACS. These RACS are responsible for establishing and maintaining the trauma system in selected regions of the state. The Southeastern Regional Advisory Committee or CRAC is located in the region's Level Two Trauma Center and New Hanover Regional Medical Center. S-MAT is just part of the RAC. The RAC is actually a membership of regional hospitals, regional EMS systems and stuff that were initially established for the trauma system. It's basically each RAC has a major trauma center, either a Level One or Two Trauma Center that is the hub of that RAC. There are eight other RACS and eight other regional S-MAT teams across the state and they function the exact same way. They pull personnel from hospitals throughout their region and EMS agencies and other medical societies and affiliations onto that team. The S-MATs are deployed in a variety of ways. If a county has an S-MAT three based in their emergency management system, the community can deploy it as the need arises. In the case of the regional S-MAT two or one teams, their deployment will come from the state emergency manager through ESF-8. The teams go through continual training to keep up to date with the latest S-MATs and weapons of mass destruction information. This training is offered in a variety of ways. We have a combination of online training and actual hands-on. They get their initial online training before they ever come to us here. Once they get here, we set them through their weapons of mass destruction. This is called Session 3, which is the basic setup of all of the Reeve system, the western shelters and all of the tent systems that we have, decamination procedures, dressing, donning and doffing. And then we do their hazardous materials. Every S-MAT team, both S-MAT type 3, type 2 and type 1, have the same basic training program. It's a 40-hour program that incorporates hazmat operations, WMD lecture treatment and then a 8-hour practical session that involves WMD-Con, alternate care facilities, setup, augmentation. Back it up! They've got the decontents. They've got to learn how to set up. They've got the rollers that they roll the patients through. When they're being decon, they've got to learn how to set that equipment up. They've got the hot water heaters and the different generators that they have. They've also got to learn how to use the personal protective equipment, like the pappers. Each team has pappers and a lot of them, especially the field people in the S-MAT 3s have probably never seen a papper on the S-MAT team. They've been used to the SCBA, like the fire department's used, but a lot of them have never seen a papper before. They've got to learn how to put on the PPE. They've got to learn how to use it. There's some detection equipment on some of the S-MAT 2 teams, different tapes and stuff, to determine if there's certain chemicals and stuff in there that have to learn how to use it. Then of course there's just the training for the response to a bioterrorism type instance. They've got to learn injuries they may see and how to treat those injuries. We've utilized the same equipment across every S-MAT 3, S-MAT 2 and every type team. They come together and it's all the exact same equipment. Everybody knows how to run the same heaters, the same water flow, all the connections are the same. Some teams of course have gone in and added extra equipment that they've determined that they may need, but the base package of equipment is identical statewide, so if you train the equipment in the sea rack then if you go out to the mountain and the mountain area racks then the equipment should be similar except for the extra equipment they put on. So somebody from the coast could very easily go to the mountain and operate that equipment if they've had the training. Everybody has to know basically how to do each other's job. Even though they're a nurse in real life we need them to help set up. So once they get through setting up they may actually go on shift and work an 8-hour shift as a nurse or as a doctor. Everybody learns how to do basic setups and to work with the equipment before they move on to their actual specialty that they work in. The vision for the North Carolina S-MAT program is to improve the medical care to persons involved in disasters. This vision is being realized through the cooperation of local hospitals and medical societies within southeastern North Carolina and beyond. The design of the entire system is meant to encompass two large-scale events up to statewide events. We can envelop it to as small as we need it or we can expand it to where we bring two DMATs in and all of the S-MAT 2s to where we can set up a 400-bed facility. And it's just this it depends on the size, it's very flexible and I guess that's the word I would use it it's versatile. Get your memorandums of understanding and agreement in place early on pull from states like North Carolina that have done it all their good ideas. Get your ducks in line your training and your equipment in place and then say okay we're ready to deploy. One of the main goals of the North Carolina state medical assistance teams is to assure the citizens that if a terrorist attack occurs in North Carolina they will be able to get the medical care services that they need. And now it's time to take a look at the latest Responder News. St. Petersburg College continues to find new ways to help first responders make America safer. The school's National Terrorism Preparedness Institute now offers a Homeland Security certificate program. About a year ago the college administration asked that we develop a Homeland Security certificate program. What we did to facilitate that was take a look at what program this would best fit into. We decided that the emergency administration and management two-year degree program was the first place to place this new Homeland Security certificate. The Homeland Security certificate program focuses mainly on issues that deal with Homeland Security deal with the threat of terrorism and deal with how communities can help to protect themselves and train their personnel to best respond to one of these terrorist incidents. The certificate program's curriculum designers kept in mind the time constraints most active duty responders face. On average, students need only five hours a week for course materials. The way we designed this program is completely online. A student no matter where they're from can take any one of these courses as they're being offered and go through the material that's in the courses do the required exercises and the required research and finish the program without ever having to come into a classroom. The program is versatile enough to provide enrichment to first responders of many levels and backgrounds. This is due mainly to the diverse group NTPI consulted in formulating it. People that should take these courses would range anywhere from risk managers in public and private sectors to the emergency managers and emergency response personnel that normally would respond to an incident that would involve weapons of mass destruction or be involved with planning for Homeland Security issues. The benefits that these type of professionals will gain from this certificate is they'll get a better insight into what the threat is to our national security or who might be involved in terrorist activity and give them some real good insight and make the community safer in the event that one of these organizations does target their particular community. The exhaustive yet unique manner used to develop the program also helps set it apart from the many counter-terrorism training experts currently accessible elsewhere. St. Petersburg College's Homeland Security program I believe is one of the best that you can possibly put your time and effort into. The reason being is the information that's in it is information that first responders from around the country have told us that they want to see in these courses. It's information that they've told us is important to them and information that they believe will help them enhance the safety and security of their own communities. By January of 2007, the Homeland Security program will be rolled into the Bachelor of Applied Science in Homeland Security as the fifth of five tracks. Registration ends May 15th. Education Secretary Margaret Spelling announced the immediate availability of 120 million dollars in fiscal aid for states serving students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Secretary Spelling and Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding, helped the overall $1.1 billion will restart school operations in the affected regions and help pay for the educational needs of the student evacuees. The relief program makes no distinction between public and non-public schools. The Hurricane Education Recovery Act includes 645 million dollars in emergency aid that will go to the 49 states housing the displaced students. The program hopes to balance immediate need with a desire to be fair. Under the plan, each state initially gets $750 for each student they took in with no disabilities and almost $938 for each student with disabilities. After the department gets data for all four quarters, increases and adjustments will be made based upon the final number of eligible students for the year. According to student and school data collected by the Department of Education, 157,743 students nationwide qualify for first quarter funding. The federal government handed out $253 million in just a few days when President Bush signed the bill into law back in December. The $6 million comes from the immediate aid to restart school operations program and goes towards helping the states hit hardest by hurricanes. Operation Community Shield continues to be successful in its war on drugs and violent crime. Federal agents from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently arrested 375 gang members. The arrests are the result of the investigation. The criminals were apprehended in 23 different states signaling the first time the federal government has used immigration and customs authorities in this campaign against transnational street gangs. Operation Community Shield was launched last February when ICE identified a gang named MS-13 as one of the largest and most violent gangs in the country. In just over a year Operation Community Shield has arrested 2,388 gang members, confiscated 117 firearms, and jailed 51 gang leaders. Medical Education Technologies Incorporated continues to make news in the human patient simulator industry. METI recently brokered the largest single order in its 10-year history. The United States Army has signed on to pay METI $5.8 million for 32 simulators. These simulators will be used in six Army Medical Simulation Training Centers. The deal calls for the Sarasota Florida-based company to be paid over the next three years, but the Army will immediately begin using the life-like computerized medical mannequins to train its 40,000 medics. The simulators are scheduled to be integrated into their system-wide curriculum this year. The 100-employee firm has produced annual sales in excess of $30 million. The paintball industry's trend of creating gear that looks like real weapons has gotten the attention of the emergency management and response information sharing and analysis center. Numerous websites sell claymore mine simulators that resemble actual military ordinance. Instead of explosives, these mine simulators shoot BBs and baby powder. In addition to mines, paintball enthusiasts can also purchase guns and blades that resemble real weaponry. The emergency management and response information sharing and analysis center has identified this as a potential threat. They fear terrorists might manufacture real weapons that look like paintball instruments. They have urged first responders to familiarize themselves with paintball gear in order to help them better protect internal critical infrastructures. The Department of Health's Office conducted a portion of Bioshield 2006. Florida's efforts to comply with the Centers for Disease Control's Cities Readiness Initiative. The Cities Readiness Initiative is a program that the CDC has implemented to support large municipalities. We are supposed to try to prophylax the community within 48 hours. So what that means for us is if we can get medication to a million people within 48 hours. The tabletop exercise held continuously in six different jurisdictions gave participants an opportunity to assess their training efforts. Those in attendance participated in guided discussions on a variety of topics. For this particular scenario it's for inhalational anthrax and as we know that this has actually happened already. So what we're trying to do is we're talking through a scenario in which there was an aerosolized attack. Somebody dropped some weaponized anthrax spores and we're trying to figure out who was affected and how anybody is sick and how we will keep anybody else from being sick or being affected by this event. I think the good thing is that a lot of us have thought through some of these processes but not together in a room like this. The health department, we've been doing planning for a long time and we've been talking about setting up pods and how we would do that. But we haven't actually gotten feedback from our community partners to see what they think about it and what their issues are because oftentimes we look at it for only our perspective and not from other perspectives. And soon we will be doing an actual pod exercise where we will be setting up and trying to dispense medication to the community and seeing how that will actually work. BioShield 2006 is actually a series of exercises aimed at testing plans, policies and procedures related to the strategic national stockpile. I'm Jenny Dean and that's your Responder News. We've just received a bronze tally at the recent 27th annual awards ceremony. The tally awards were founded in 1978 to honor excellence in cable television programs, commercials and non-broadcast video. Today, the tally is one of the most sought after awards by industry leaders. Last year, the tally awards received over 12,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents. With terrorism becoming prevalent in hot spots all over the globe and bombings and almost daily occurrence internationally, it is natural for first responders in this country to prepare well in advance for domestic threats. Stacy Phillips continues her report on the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center with a look at the incident response to terrorist bombing scores. It's not often a ghost town can be revitalized but in Playa, New Mexico an old town was put to a new use. The people who used to live here worked for a local mining company went out of business, the town was deserted. That's when New Mexico Tech came in, purchased the land and it became a very unique training facility. In fact, it's the only one of its kind in the United States. One of two courses being taught by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is named Incident Response to Terrorist Bombings and is being administered by New Mexico Tech. Both here in Playa and at the bombing range in Securo. It is designed to help first responders perform effectively and safely during bombing incidents including the hot zone. This course is an overview it's teaching first responders from pretty much all walks of life be they police, fire, EMS emergency managers public works people anyone who's going to be out on the front lines whenever we actually have a response to a terrorist bombing and it's pretty much we teach people response in explosives as a general overview of how to deal with explosives what they look like, what they can do we also teach them a little bit about improvised explosives there in the classroom. We bring them out here to the range, we show them commercial military explosives and what they look like our job is certainly not to take anyone into a bomb tech it's just to give them a realization and awareness about what these materials look like and what they may run into as first responders when they go out on calls. We also teach them how to respond to predetination incidents such as bomb threats suspicious packages we also teach them how to deal with post blasts where the bombs actually already gone off and dealing with structural hazards they may run into hazards involving people injuries that can occur to people that are close in with the device we also have an overview of dealing with special incidents that they might run into such as a continuing explosive event where bombs are still being thrown and people are still dying such as the school attack in bezel in Russia also bring them back out here and to the range and we show them improvised explosive mixes, improvised explosive devices how they function, the damage that they can do and like today we're setting them up where they can see what a letter bomb and a parcel bomb when in a car bomb what kind of terrible havoc a car bomb can wreak on an area in the neighborhood as well as people that are involved. Great thing about these classes are they're up to date it's not information that's years old it brings it up to current up to date issues that are going on so this class is fantastic for making sure that everybody's ahead of the game we know what's going on we can foresee kind of the pattern of which direction they're heading with the groups that are trying to form in your state and in your area and it gives a great basis of knowledge. It's normally in a police officer when he responds to a situation it's a quick assessment and jump right in and stop whatever it is whatever aggression whatever the situation is to immediately react but with a WMD a weapons of mass destruction or a terrorist time has changed we can't just take that initial jump right in and respond we have to spend just a few more seconds or maybe another minute to assess the situation maybe there's something more sinister involved maybe there's been a nerve agent release so the the respond to quickly to jump right in and try to respond to help has to now take a second place to let's just spend a few more minutes let's make sure that we are not getting ourselves into a situation that we can't get ourselves out of. This course is designed to provide participants with the skills and information needed in order to respond effectively to terrorist incidents using explosives and incendiaries. It also gives the students a first-hand look and healthy respect for the explosives a terrorist might employ. We asked Jim Galloway why it was necessary to bring people from all over the U.S. to New Mexico Tech in order to receive instruction. What we're teaching people when they come out on this class is dealing with the entire to a terrorist incident of all kinds and there's no telling everyone like or seems to think that the big cities such as New York or Chicago or one of the big major environments like at Los Angeles is probably going to be the next target. There's a good chance that it may not be it may well just be an attack on small town America. The reason we bring in people like emergency managers people from some of the medical profession as well as public works people is because they're all going to be frontline people. If an incident like that happens hospitals are going to be flooded and people need to know about what these bombing incidents can do. A big portion of a bombing is that once the life safety issue has been solved and people have been picked up and taken to hospitals we've got a crime scene we've got to prosecute people and that also is a big part of this class is this incident inside here with the letter bomb and the parcel bomb is to show people what kind of forensics evidence is left after a bomb goes off and how much stuff is there and how critical it is to both document and collect that evidence so that a person can be prosecuted down the road. When these students return to their jurisdictions they will be prepared to share the information learned here at New Mexico Tech and will have the tools needed to teach their colleagues how to prevent deter and respond to attacks. There's a huge need for this information and it's an educational training tool that we know somewhere somehow the potential for this to happen is there we know that we have organizations in the state of Maryland and throughout the United States that have already come over and they're just starting to get organized and if we can get ahead of the game and find out what are the little indicators to prevent them from becoming organized then we're going to win. So what will happen is you'll go through this course and then you'll go back and would you basically copy the course that you have here to your officers or how will it work when you go back to Baltimore. Each agency is going to have a different response to when they get here. Me personally I'm trying to get a lot of my officers to attend this class because there's so much information that you sometimes lose it in the transition but they give you CDs, the training book, the information to go back and train your officers with this information and that's my intent is to go back and to train the officers do a roll call training. We have a training academy staff that is also attending that they get this information and the more we can share with the officers who then can share with the public and the community the better off we're all going to be. The first iteration of the training, the incident response to terrorism we've been sending our officers to that for almost three years now and like I said we've had 40 or 50 officers through it and almost to a man and woman upon their return said this is some of if not the best training we've ever received and some of those comments coming from 20, 25, 30 veterans of law enforcement and the state of California is known for providing state of the art training to its personnel so hearing that I think was a great thing for me and my command staff and my observation already just in one day and a short morning so far is this is great training and I'm glad that I sent the SWAT team two months ago or half of them and now I get to see it firsthand. During this course we've met first responders from all over the country from Florida to California and what they're telling us is that it doesn't matter where you live you can apply this to your community because this training is a great resource. The training this course offers is vital not only for the information it provides concerning evaluation prevention and response to terrorist incidents but also first-hand knowledge of the destructive potential of explosive devices. First responders who take the course are in a much better position to deal with the consequences of these events having experienced the aftermath in actual training scenarios. In order to qualify as a participant in this course you must have significant experience as a first responder and be recognized as a trainer by your agency. The training, equipment and housing are all free and are delivered at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to find out if you're eligible you should talk to your local training officer or your state training point of contact. For more details visit the NTPI website. Now let's take a look at our calendar of events. On May 23rd and 24th the International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics will be held at the Double Tree Hotel San Diego Mission Valley in San Diego, California. For more information please visit the NTPI website or visit our website or visit our website or visit our website or visit our website or visit our website or visit our website in San Diego, California. And on May 23rd through 25th the 2006 Contingency Planning Expo, a global alliance for survival, will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Mirage. Then on June 5th and 6th the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will conduct the 2006 Emergency Preparedness and Response Conference at the University of Finlay School of Environmental and Emergency Management in Finlay, Ohio. The 30th Annual International Association of Chiefs of Police Law Enforcement Information Management Conference and Exposition will be held on June 5th through 9th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Great Vine, Texas. On June 14th through 16th the 2006 International Conference for Police and Peace Officer Executives will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. Then on June 15th and 16th the 8th Annual Biodetection Technologies Conference will be held at the Omni-Shorehem Hotel and Conference Center in XE. And on June 17th through 21st the National Sheriffs Association will conduct their annual conference and exhibition at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Recognizing that law enforcement leadership plays a key role in terrorism preparedness and prevention the Department of Homeland Security and Michigan State University are now offering the course leading from front weapons of mass destruction awareness for the law enforcement executive. This course is tailored to law enforcement. Diane Roberts went to Hamilton, Ohio and shows us the training in action. If Oklahoma City didn't serve as a wake-up call, the 9-11 certainly did. Most law enforcement executives worry about terrorism and whether their department is ready for the worst. We in the Fairfield Police Department take our responsibility as seriously and because of the nature of weapons of mass destruction and the remote possibility that we as a community would be struck we want to be prepared. To meet the need, the International Association of Chiefs of Police asked Michigan State University to develop an entirely new training course that moves law enforcement from old tradition to new practices. The terrorists are still out there. Mike Morrissey is the curriculum developer for this course. It's called leading from the front weapons of mass destruction awareness for the law enforcement executive. Why is it important that executive level officers take this course? If there's a need to respond to a weapons of mass destruction incident or to plan for the response to such an incident the leadership in a law enforcement agency has to come from the top down. They set the standard, they set the example. If we're going to make a difference with Homeland Security it's going to be... Instructors and Bob Smith assist in teaching the 16-hour two-day course. Who attends the course and do they have to have any certain qualifications or prerequisites to attend? Well, the margin of prerequisites to come to the course basically we like for police chiefs to come to the course, we like for public safety directors to be attendees. We really invite as many stakeholders to this training as possible. It just builds that collaboration. There's a lot of dialogue that we can help facilitate where people work with each other. On this day, the course is being presented in Hamilton, Ohio. MSU will take the course to wherever it's requested working with local agencies as co-hosts. To understand the course benefits, just ask a hosting agency. I think it's quite important to have people from all over the tri-state region. Normally when we have the training we're all in and we have people from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. So it gives a very broad perspective on how people can and will work together if it becomes necessary. Entering the course students have clear goals of their own. My expectation is that our command staff will be given ideas and some sense of direction as to where we can go to prepare for these types of events. What kind of steps we need to take as a local police department to prepare ourselves that should an event occur in our area that we're capable of responding to it. And since this course was basically set out as an executive level for awareness and knowledge it fit right into some of the things that I'm trying to do with weapons of mass destruction awareness and more training about terrorism and terrorism awareness. Those goals mesh perfectly with the overall course objective. Bringing awareness to law enforcement executives who may be called on to plan for or respond or to manage in an incident command setting the response to a weapon of mass destruction incident. But it's much more than that because we try to deal with an all hazards approach whether it's a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, a flood or some other incident of national significance. Our goal is to allow the participants to have an understanding as to the culture shift that needs to occur in law enforcement. When police officers enter a role call room like this one their focus is on the day to day concerns of crime fighting and public safety. But in a post 9-11 world police leadership need to make sure terrorism preparedness is also part of the day's strategy. The executives in any law enforcement agency, be it federal, state, local or tribal, need to direct their operations from the front office. They need to be the managers in charge. Over the two-day 16-hour course what is a typical experience for a student? The student begins by building a base of knowledge because we don't know the level of knowledge that everybody has within the program who comes to the door. We build a basic knowledge level dealing with types of WMD elements that are out there. We'll talk about the various components of the NIMS system. We'll talk about various components of the state, federal, tribal and local governments and how they interact with one another. We deal with some of the threats and we talk about Al-Qaeda and we talk about national or threat groups within the United States themselves, home-grown groups and we build to a level and then we begin giving them tools. On day two it's a little more interactive which is, I think, a little more exciting. All these tools start coming together in a tabletop exercise where the participants blend the collaboration and they just work together and hopefully see success. Here are the maps and here's your very first segment one. In the tabletop exercise students are given a scenario. They have to set up a functioning command structure and begin making key life and death decisions. Where's your command center that you're having anybody else responding arrive to? If they pay attention to the course objectives the outcome should be a success. If they stay in that building and in the mall they're not going to lock doors down because there is no such policy. Get people out of immediate danger. So what do you hope a student gets out of this? What are some of the specific learning objectives? There are a number of them. We hope that the participant will take away some knowledge of extremist terrorism. We hope that they'll take away some knowledge about what weapons of mass destruction are specifically the phenomenon on homicide or suicide bombers. We want everyone to understand what the national incident management system is. That's an important objective. That's critical. That's something that we need to every community has to have their arms around in order to get federal funding. People need to understand that. Thanks to activities such as the tabletop exercise some of these students may have had their first exposure to NIMS and to what it feels like to be an incident commander in a WMD event. However instructors are insistent on one point the exercises shouldn't end here. Once the course is over I know you guys would like for people to take part in training exercises. Why is that important? We want people to exercise their plans because it gives them a feeling of empowerment. Once they take that plan off the shelf and they actually exercise through the plan they can see how community collaborations are powerful. They can see how these plans will help them prepare for and prevent in many occasions the event from happening. Students will leave the course with a workbook and other reference materials. The hope is they'll share some of these resources and their knowledge with jurisdictions back home re-energizing the planning process. I have some to-do list make sure when you get back to do this and make sure this is on board with this. Those sorts of things. It's not a checklist per se but it certainly is notes that will clog my mental notes to get things done. To help maintain the momentum students are given access to an online resource. We also have a dedicated website that's maintained at Michigan State University where participants can log on and get additional information additional training resources. The website is a great tool it gives us the opportunity to place on that just loads and loads of information. Students say they will make use of the resources. Well number one I'm going to develop some training out of this. We need to probably train our uniformed people a little bit better in assessing intelligence information that they may come into their possession that they either hold on to or don't know what to do with it. So I think we need to go back where I need to go back and look at our procedures and how we do that. In many cases we don't have the depth of experience to know what we ought to be thinking about. The wide ranging topics here at least gives me a framework of how to go back and address it within my own agency. And simply by attending the course has provided one other valuable jump start. Networking. Personnel knowing each other so that when the when we all arrive on scene it's not that we have to get acquainted we already know each other's backgrounds and it gives us a head start on taking care of the problem. How does someone register for the course? How do departments find out about it and where do they go to take part in it? There are a number of ways to do this. Again we have a website at Michigan State University. The address is www.cj.msu.edu and that's the home page for the School of Criminal Justice. On that page there's a section called Outreach and under the Outreach button is the Weapons of Mass Destruction Course. All participants need to do is fill out an application. As for cost the course is funded by the Office of Grants and Training under the Department of Homeland Security. The cost right now of the tuition there is no tuition for the training. The cost is basically the participants time and the travel cost they might have. It's just that simple. The leading from the front course represents a significant step in helping law enforcement meet the goals identified in the National Strategy for Homeland Security. Now if you'd like more information on this course or any of the agencies featured in this program just visit our website or you can write to us at COMNET PEOBOX 13489 St. Petersburg, Florida our zip code here is 33733. And while you're on the NTPI website be sure to sign up and take the online test also you can help ensure that we are meeting your learning needs by completing one of our evaluation forms. And a quick reminder our next COMNET will air Wednesday June 28th at 2 p.m. Eastern time. And be sure to join us for live response on May 24th at 2 p.m. Eastern time when we will discuss the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. Again thank you for viewing and we'll see you next time on COMNET.