NYPD’s Lessons Learned From Tucson-Style Shootings

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The New York Police Department on Jan. 20 gave security officials from the city’s private sector an analysis of active shooter attacks that have taken place over the last 45 years. The analysis noted that the overwhelming majority of such attacks, which are similar to the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., involve a single attacker that is actively killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area. According to Jessica Tisch, the director of policy and planning at the NYPD’s counterterrorism squad, the fact that 98 percent of active shooter attacks are carried out by just one individual makes them more difficult to detect before they take place. The analysis also found that 46 percent of active shooter attacks ended after law enforcement or bystanders used force against the attacker, while 40 percent ended after the attacker committed suicide. Meanwhile, the NYPD’s Capt. Michael Riggio provided advice to corporate business security officials in attendance at a conference in Manhattan on how to handle active shooter attacks. He said that companies should prepare drills that simulate such attacks and create a room stocked with medical supplies that employees can flee to in the event a shooter is in the building. Riggio also noted that employees should be trained to not approach police officers responding to an active shooter attack, and to evacuate the building with their hands open and above their heads. Finally, Riggio said that if employees cannot avoid a confrontation with the shooter, they should arm themselves with whatever they can find and attack him as aggressively and violently as possible.

By:  Armour National Security Group, LLC – (A New York Security Firm)

Egypt Investigates Deadly Church Bombing

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The new year got off to a violent start in the Egyptian city of Alexandria when a Coptic church was bombed shortly after the conclusion of midnight Mass on Saturday. The bombing, which is believed to be the worst act of sectarian violence in Egypt since 2000, killed 21 people and injured nearly 100 others. The attack sparked demonstrations by Christians, who stormed a mosque across the street from the church that was bombed and got into clashes with Egyptian security forces on Saturday afternoon. Authorities were forced to fire tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the demonstration. Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities are continuing their investigation into the bombing. On Sunday, an undisclosed number of people were arrested in suspicion of being involved in the attack. Egyptian authorities have also said that they are trying to determine whether the bombing, which the Egyptian Interior Ministry has blamed on “foreign elements,” was carried out with a car bomb or explosives held by a suicide bomber.

By:  Armour National Security Group, LLC – (A New York Security Company)

Clinton Treads Carefully in Leading Massive Damage-Control Campaign

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials have been working for weeks now to contain the damage from the WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables, some of which painted foreign officials in an unflattering light. Several days before the cables were leaked, Clinton called leaders in a number of countries–including the U.K., France, and China–to warn them about the impending release of the documents. In addition, State Department bureaus began developing assessments of the impact of the release several weeks ago, after officials realized that WikiLeaks had obtained a large amount of diplomatic messages. Since last Friday, a task force has been running a round-the-clock “war room” at the State Department to address any issues that may arise from the release of the documents. Clinton has also sent a message to State Department personnel in an effort to boost morale, and has said that personnel still need to send candid reports back to officials in Washington, despite the fact that the release of some of the cables has proved embarrassing. While Clinton has said that she did not believe that the release of the cables would do any permanent damage to relations between the U.S. and other countries, some U.S. diplomats say that WikiLeaks has documents that it has not released that could potentially do more damage than those that were recently leaked.

By: Armour National Security Group, LLC – (A New York Security Company)

Defense, Friends Say Ore. Bomb Plot Suspect Set Up

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Mohamed Osman Mohamud on Monday pleaded not guilty to a charge related to his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate explosives at a recent Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. During the hearing, the public defender representing Mohamud said that the plot–which was involved setting off six 55-gallon drums of explosives in a van at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square–was part of a setup by the FBI. However, prosecutors defended the sting operation, saying that Mohamud opted to not back out of the plot and seemed to relish the carnage that would take place when the bomb was detonated. Prosecutors also noted that Mohamud dialed a cell phone number that he thought would detonate the bomb.

By : Armour National Security Group, LLC – (A New York Security Company)

TSA Chief: Resisting Scanners Just Means Delays

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Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief John Pistole is calling on holiday travelers not to participate in National Opt-Out Day, a protest against the full-body scanners that have raised privacy concerns because they produce detailed images of airline passengers’ naked bodies. The organizers of the protest are calling on airline passengers to opt out of being scanned on Wednesday and instead submit to a more time consuming pat down search, in the hopes that forcing TSA agents to conduct a large number of pat downs will create significant delays. Pistole has acknowledged that the protest has the potential to snarl airline travel on what is the busiest travel day of the year, which in turn would only hurt those “who want to go home and see their loved ones.” So far there is little if any indication that passengers are protesting against the scanners by choosing to be patted down by TSA agents. However, Paul Ruden a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, said just one or two airline passengers protesting the scanners would be enough to cause “huge” delays.

By :  Armour National Security Group, LLC

TSA: Airport Security Pat-Downs Are Here to Stay

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Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief John Pistole made an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday to discuss the controversy surrounding the security measures that are in place at airports across the country. Under those security measures, airline passengers at some airports must go through full-body scanners, which are capable of seeing through passengers’ clothing. The TSA plans to have 500 scanners installed at airports across the country by the end of this year, with plans to install an additional 500 scanners by the end of 2011. Although passengers can opt out of the scans, those who choose to do so–as well as those who require a secondary screening–must be go through a pat-down, which involves a TSA agent checking the passenger’s breasts and/or groin. While Pistole acknowledged that some passengers were concerned about the images produced by the scanners, and that some felt that the pat-downs were “demeaning,” he noted that the TSA’s security policies are not going to change. However, the TSA has relaxed some of its security procedures for airline pilots. The TSA announced Friday that pilots would no longer be required to go through the full-body scans or endure the pat-downs–a move that came after pilots criticized the security measures as being unnecessary. Nevertheless, pilots will still be required to present ID and go through metal detectors at airport security checkpoints.

By: Armour National Security Group, LLC,  http://www.armournationalsecurity.com

Airport Check-In: Registered Traveler Program Clear is Back

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Some travelers will now be able to skip to the front of the line at security checkpoints at Orlando International Airport. In order to do that, travelers will have to sign up for Clear, a service which screens travelers before they arrive at the airport. When travelers sign up for the program, they pay a $179 fee and submit their fingerprints and iris scan. This information is then stored in Clear’s machines in airports in order to verify the identity of travelers. The service was operated for several years by Verified Identity Pass, though the company eventually declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. Travelers who had valid Clear memberships when Verified Identity Pass folded will be able to use the service for the remaining terms of their memberships.

This Year in Scandals: Contractors Behaving Badly

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by Alexandra Andrews
ProPublica, Jan. 5, 2009, 11:46 a.m.

The Pentagon was repeatedly rebuked in 2008 for lax oversight of its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing accusations of gouging U.S. taxpayers and endangering troops and Iraqi civilians. This past year, KBR and Blackwater were responsible for the lion’s share of contractor misconduct allegations. Below is our round-up.

KBR

KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, is the beast of all the military contractors ; as of May last year, it had earned more than $24 billion . That’s nearly a quarter of the total amount the U.S. has spent on contractors in Iraq.

But KBR’s ubiquitous presence in ongoing U.S. wars has also generated a number of problems. It has been accused of bilking U.S. taxpayers on workman’s comp and engaging in the human trafficking of Nepali workers. It was accused of installing shoddy electrical wiring in barracks in Iraq and then ignoring warnings to fix it; 18 people have been electrocuted. A subsequent Pentagon investigation of the wiring determined that KBR was guilty of “serious contractual noncompliance.”

Around the same time that the Pentagon report came out, Military Times published a disturbing investigation of KBR’s massive “burn pit” at Balad , the largest U.S. base in Iraq. According to a 2006 memo from an Air Force official, the pit was burning plastics, paint, Styrofoam and medical waste, including amputated limbs. A resultant smog of toxic, cancer-causing chemicals hung over the base, and several GIs have reported illnesses. In late November, a former Air Force employee filed a suit against KBR . In addition to the burn pit, the suit alleges that KBR served troops rotten food, contaminated water and ice that had been transported in trucks that “still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them.” KBR declined to comment to the Times.

KBR is also facing a lawsuit from 16 members of the Indiana National Guard who are accusing the company of knowingly exposing them to hexavalent chromium (the cancer-causing chemical made famous by Erin Brockovich) at the Qarmat Ali water treatment facility in Iraq in the months following the 2003 invasion.

At a Senate hearing in June, a former KBR employee accused the company of initially downplaying the chemical as a “minor irritant at worst ” (PDF) and ignoring evidence from a U.N. report that warned of the chemical’s risks. The Army is conducting its own investigation . KBR told CNN that it notified the Army Corps of Engineers immediately after discovering the chemical, and its efforts to clean it up were deemed sufficient.

Blackwater

Blackwater is a much smaller company, but it’s still managed to garner a significant amount of notoriety. In September 2007, Blackwater employees fired on a group of civilian Iraqis in a widely publicized incident at Nisour Square; 17 people were killed.

In November, the Justice Department charged five of those employees with manslaughter. The guards have defended their actions by saying they were fired upon first, but testimony from a sixth guard who has cooperated with the FBI suggests otherwise. Attorneys for the five guards lashed out at the government for “second-guess[ing] split-second decisions” made in a war-zone.

Blackwater has also been accused of skirting federal laws prohibiting private entities from buying automatic weapons and misrepresenting its size to win contracts reserved for small businesses. The company is also facing huge fines from the State Department for shipping weapons to Iraq and Jordan without proper licensing . A federal grand jury in North Carolina is also investigating whether or not Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq in giant sacks of dog food.

And in a final blow to Blackwater, a recent draft report from the State Department inspector general indicates that Blackwater might be losing its license to work in Iraq very soon.

Obama has pledged to reduce U.S. reliance on private security contractors like KBR and Blackwater, but NPR notes that it won’t be so easy to break the addiction .

Bomb Makers Plotted Blasts Over U.S.

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Investigators looking into the recent attempt to send explosives to the U.S. on board cargo flights believe they have determined the intent of those behind the plot. According to investigators, there are several signs that indicate that the bombers intended for the explosives to detonate while the cargo planes were in mid-air before they landed at their destinations. For example, the cell phones that the terrorists used as detonators had been altered to maximize their battery life. Authorities say that the changes, which included removing the screen face from the cell phones, could have allowed the devices’ batteries to last three to four days. In addition, officials say that the fact that the packages that contained the explosives had outdated addresses of synagogues in Chicago was another indication that the terrorists behind the plot wanted to detonate their explosives while the cargo planes were in mid-air. However, authorities do not believe that the terrorists would have had full control over where the devices would have detonated. It remains unclear whether the devices would have worked as designed.

Focus on Cargo Security Steps

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The recent interception of several packages filled with dangerous explosives bound for Chicago from Yemen has put the spotlight on air freight security. The Obama administration is expected to propose a plan to improve such cargo inspection, improvements that many experts say are long overdue. That is not to say that they are calling on 100 percent package inspection as such a policy has the potential to adversely impact shipping times. Instead, they suggest undertaking a targeted, risk-basked approach that would profile shipments based on country of origin or shipper identity. Regardless of the approach, there does appear to be room for a change as it is estimated that the overall percentage of shipments screened prior to entering the U.S. may be as low as 50 percent. There are a number of reasons for these security oversights, including a shortage of funding for screening technology and the reluctance of cargo companies to help improve screening procedures. These procedures vary based on the country where the package originated according to government oversight and the state of the cargo industry in the area. Differences in air-cargo security are higher than those in passenger security policies. In fact, the U.S. actually has more cargo inspectors than Europe. However, the European Union is largely complying with the U.S. mandate that 100 percent of all cargo loaded on passenger planes gets screened. But cargo that arrives in the E.U. and is redirected to other countries does not get rescreened. For example, cargo can arrive in Europe from Pakistan and go onto a flight to Argentina without being checked. From there it could then enter the U.S. without being screened.