NY Times: “The Terror Translators”

Alan Feuer has a very interesting article in today’s NY Times about the Analytic Unit of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division. Feuer piece explains

To bolster counterterrorism operations after 9/11, the Police Department expanded its Intelligence Division — run by David Cohen, a 30-year veteran of the C.I.A. — with detectives who had mainly spent their careers chasing street gangs, drug lords and violent Mafiosi. Such trained investigators brought with them specific skills the department thought would translate into the fight against terror: the ability to read a suspect’s manner and the talent for managing secret informants.

What they needed, in turn, were people to help them translate their skills to new terrain, people with a firm cultural grasp of the suspects they were meant to be pursuing. Over the years, a gang detective in the Bronx will probably have developed a radar able to determine at a glance the meaning of a hand gesture or a prison tattoo. But, as one former intelligence detective said of potential Islamic extremists, “when we first started, we didn’t even know they prayed on Fridays.”

Enter the Analytic Unit, which Samuel J. Rascoff, who ran it from 2006 to 2008 and is now a law professor at New York University, described as an attempt to bring “the culturally exotic world of the ivory tower to bear on the gritty problems of counterterrorism as experienced by beat cops and seasoned detectives.”

The Analytic Unit:

stands as a unique experiment in breaking traditional law-enforcement boundaries, comprising two dozen civilian experts — lawyers, academics, corporate consultants, investment bankers, alumni of the World Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations and even a former employee of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan.

I think there is a compelling case that, due to its high-profile as terrorist target, the NYPD needs to have wide-ranging analytical prowess. For more on the NYPD’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Divisions, see Christopher Dickey’s book Securing the City. However, the rise of these divisions has not been without controversy. At times, there have been issues regarding the protection of civil liberties. But, even within the intelligence community, there has been some friction. See, for example, this post from the Washington Post’s SpyTalk blog.

One thing is certain, how intelligence analysis is integrated with local policing is a topic of great importance. To get a sense as to how this is being done in New York, Feuer’s article is a great place to start.