Emergency Response: Learning from the Mistakes of Others

Winning Plays...

As I read through the article "Winning Plays: Essential Guidance from the Terrorism Line of Scimmage" (Beering, Maniscalco, Christen, Storment and Vickery, 2002) it was clear to me that there are two major flaws in our current terrorism response strategy. First of all we are ill prepared to handle known threats, and secondly we are not taking steps to identify and deal with new threats.

The first problem, we are ill prepared to handle known threats, can clearly be illustrated by our under-funded local health departments, by our failure to implement modern protective devices around sensitive facilities like nuclear power plants, water supplies and waste treatment plants, and by our failure to communicate effectively between local, state and federal government agencies. (Beering, Maniscalco, Storment and Vickery, 2002). The last failure is a real concern, especially when dealing with intelligence. The FBI (Beering, Maniscalco, Storment and Vickery, 2002, pg. 7) has the capability to gather and analyze intelligence on possible terror attacks, yet their reluctance to share this information with local police forces, who are responsible for dealing with local attacks, is hindering their ability to do their jobs. In order to overcome this communication problem the local police force and the local media need to be trained on how to properly handle sensitive information relating to terrorism plots, and the FBI needs to create working relationships with local police forces to allow for a smoother more liberal flow of information between these agencies.