Role of Law Enforcement Administrators

¶ … Role of Law Enforcement Administrators in the face of increased International Terrorism

The origins of the office of the sheriff, both in England as well as in the United States of America are very old, and in England, it can be traced back to the time of the Norman Conquest in the year 1066. This was the time when, for the purpose of bettering their community security, the neighbors were grouped in what was known as 'tithing', and their role was to help their neighbors in times of need. These were groups of ten members, and when tithes were arranged in larger groups, of ten members each, and then they were known as shires, making up to one hundred members. These shires were to come under the supervision of the Shire Reeve, who would have been appointed by the King, and they were actually quite similar to the counties of today. The so called 'Shire-Reeve' was what evolved into the Sheriff of today, and in the year 1085, when William the Conqueror was King, he appointed the Sheriff as the official 'tax collector'.

This caused great turmoil and uproar among the subjects, but to no avail; the Sheriff would be the Tax Collector. It was in the year 1100 that the then ruler King Henry I happened to establish the very first Penal Code, and thenceforth, crimes came to be classified as felonies or misdemeanors. The Sheriff's authority and his influences were increased at around the same time, and soon he became a person who would be responsible for carrying out various punishments. In later years, when the English Colonists happened to settle down in America, they formed shires, which would be administered by the English Commander of the Garrison, and his Provost Marshall. Later on, during the 1630's, a few Sheriffs happened to take over some of the duties of the Provosts, and it was in the year 1634 that the state of Virginia appointed its very first Sheriff, William Stone, of Accomack County. The various duties that the American Sheriffs were expected to perform were policing; supervising elections, maintaining jails, and so on. In the year 1776, it was the Sheriff Nixon who proclaimed the 'Declaration of Independence'.

It is indeed a fact that from the time of its origin and its inception, the history of American police, form when it started in England, has undergone numerous changes, and social, political and economic forces have brought about these changes.

The year 1939, as everyone knows, was a time of civilization's lowest ebbs, and when a Swiss sociologist Norbert Elias, happened to publish a book named 'Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation', or in other words, 'On the Civilizing Process', he came up with a strange and a most unlikely theory, which was that the very gradual introduction of social and courtly manners, like for example, eating with a fork and knife, using a handkerchief, and not spitting or urinating on the streets, was what had played a major and a most important role in changing and transforming the existing violent and medieval society of older times, into the more civilized and modern one in existence today.

The book happened to be relegated to obscurity, with the upheavals and turbulence of the 1940's, what with Hitler's invasions and all the atrocities associated with the World War. However, the book was later, during the year 1978, published, with the title 'The History of Manners', and this was when it was noticed by a great number of people. The author subsequently became the real 'guru' of the 'history of crime', something that had never before been analyzed. When historians, therefore, started to analyze ancient archives and texts, they found to their amazement, that crime, especially murder, was in fact at a much higher rate during the Middle Ages, than in the modern times. The crime rate, in fact, is believed to have dropped significantly during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the nineteenth centuries. This was a strange phenomenon indeed, because according to social theory, the crime rates were supposed to increase with the breaking up of social and community bonds in society, and at the time when there was an increase in urbanization and industrialization.

Various historians have offered various different reasons for the unexpected decrease in the crime rate during the comparatively modern times, and there were some who assumed that perhaps it was industrialization and urbanization and modernization that contributed to this phenomenon. There were some other scholars and researchers who theorized that in actuality crime had not diminished, but had in fact shifted form bodily assaults that were popular in those times, to crimes that were more or less closely related to property, which also indicated that the nature of crime had shifted from an innate scarcity and paucity, to a greater prosperity as well as a free availability of material goods and possessions during modern times. There is also another form of opinion, which states that the decrease in crime seemed to have happened irrespective of industrialization and urbanization.

Perhaps the reason was that there had been an internal psychological shift in people's attitudes towards crime, and this was what had caused the decrease in crime in modern times, as compared to medieval times. While during the Middle Ages, physical violence of all kinds, even to the point of death, was a method with which to defend one's honor, and also to resolve various disputes of any kind, the perpetrator was never ever known as a criminal or as a social outcast because of the 'crime' that he had committed; in fact, he was accepted, even though he was a murderer, with a certain amount of leniency. According to Barbara A. Hanawalt, a historian at Ohio State University, only about 12% of murders ended in a conviction at that time, and the rate of larceny was about 23%, while stealth, burglary, counterfeiting, and other similar crimes were about 100% prevalent. These trends, however, happened to shift after the middle Ages, and the community tolerance changed as well.

The state gained in prominence, while the local community lost its importance. While in the fourteenth century, people appeared to be infinitely more concerned with their reputations, whether they were people of good repute or otherwise, and the entire community was invited to judge the individual, during the fifteenth century, there was a shift from the community reputation of the fourteenth century, to the questions of somebody's 'governance', and a sort of an internal control. With the advent of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and the expansions of the 'state' in numerous parts of Europe, any sort of unruly and undisciplined and violent behaviors on the parts of the common citizens was taken to be a direct affront and an insult to the Prince or to the ruling King of the time. All this resulted in an increase in the amount of self-control on the peoples' parts, and this in turn led to more civilized behavior.

In England, during the late nineteenth century, the innately restrictive framework of the various separate forms of action in civil cases was in fact replaced by the newer and more modern uniform 'writ of summons', and this meant that more liberal amendments of pleading would be permitted from then onwards.

According to a statement made by Morton H. Halperin and Kate Martin before the House Judiciary Committee, on 24 September 2001, a mere few days after the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th that had left more than thousands of innocent American citizens injured or dead, the two appeared to present their case on behalf of the Center for National Security Studies, a true fighter and protector of civil liberties and civil rights, which also makes sure that civil liberties of the private citizens are never compromised on the basis of national security.

The two stated that the Center also believes that the national security must, and of course be protected without in any way undermining the fundamental rights of all the individuals that had been guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. They said that it was not too soon to begin to think about he various ways and means with which to improve the ability to prevent such attacks form happening again at any time in the near and distant future. However, what one must remember is that one must make the important decision that one must act in such a way that not only the personal liberty of an individual, but also the security must be protected to the best levels possible. In fact, this is an important lesson from the past, the pair stated, when all one's concerns for safety and security were eroded and destroyed, and people mutely and uncomplainingly accepted this as being completely normal, as seen, for example, in the 'Alien and Sedition Acts', the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the various efforts that were made by Intelligence agencies in America as well as by the federal Bureau of Investigation, to effectively disrupt the civil rights and the ant-war movements that had been carried out by intelligent individuals in recent times. Therefore, one must be both committed to the law, as well as to individual freedom, and this would be in keeping with the trends as dictated by a democratic country such as the United States of America.

It must be stated that in the Post Cold War world, crimes such as terrorism, narcotics drugs trafficking, money laundering, and so on, are all considered to be serious threats to the very security of the entire nation. These threats are in fact termed as 'transnational threats', and they are today, in the face of the changing nature of crime and related security, the primary concerns of law enforcement agencies as well as that of the U.S. Intelligence Community. For example, two serious foreign banking scandals that occurred during the late years of the 1980's, made sure of the fact that any information that would be in the hands of Intelligence Agencies in the United States of America must be made available to law enforcement officials as well. This led in turn to the development wherein, during the middle of the 1990's, the Federal Bureau of Investigation started to assign several more additional agents to newly created offices, all over the world. The great tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, is a perfect example of how big and frightening the issue of international terrorism has become to the issue of upholding and protecting national security.

In fact, the Bush Administration and the Congress have both moved in a rapid and efficient manner in order to establish more Intelligence and Enforcement cooperation among several different agencies of the United States of America, to face better threats like the Al-quaeda to the national security. It is the opinion of some people that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact by the year 1991 was innately responsible for altering, in an extremely significant manner, the international environment, and this was the time, therefore, when transnational issues such as terrorism, drug trafficking, shipments of WMD, or in other words, weapons for mass destruction, money laundering, and so on and so forth happened to become very important, and in some cases, these issues gained even more importance than the hitherto traditionally political and all related issues.

As a matter of fact, the Director of central Intelligence, or the DCI, George Tenet, has stated that the threat that has risen from issues like that of terrorism is very real, and it is also an evolving issue. Although the state sponsored method of terrorism appears to have declined today, the method of terrorism being demonstrated by transnational groups, with a unique method of decentralized leadership, which in turn happens to make such groups not only more difficult to identify, but also infinitely more difficult to disrupt and disband, has started to increase everywhere. This means that more concern must be shown towards issues related to international crimes, and as a matter of fact, much before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in September 2001, were executed, there was a greater amount of interest as well as concern about international crime being carried out all over the world.

It must be noted at this point that although the responsibilities of the Courts of the United States of America and the several law enforcement agencies in America have traditionally always included those activities like for example, smuggling, piracy, and so on, that occur outside the territorial borders of the U.S.A., these activities have never been considered as being threats to the national security of America, or even as being on the same level as the several types of military threats that are being today, posed by foreign countries. These are the responsibilities of the state and the Defense Departments, and the Intelligence Departments of America. What this means is that the changed and the altered international realities have inevitably led to a larger and an infinitely more expansive role to be played by the law enforcement agencies of America, and this must be combined with the employment of intelligence agencies, as well as with the operational departments of the State and the Defense wings.

Therefore, it can be said that while on the one hand there is today the rising phenomenon of agencies being charged with domestic law enforcement, with these officials playing rather extensive roles in overseas missions, on the other hand, there is the occurrence of intelligence agencies laying emphasis and focusing for the main part on the various illegal activities being carried out in foreign countries. This in turn means that the very evolution and the resultant changes and the intermingling and combining of law enforcement agencies and intelligence efforts has led to the phenomenon of a blurring and disintegration of the distinctions and the differences between the law and the security policy, which has been hitherto been kept separate and individualized and distinct from each other until now. The FBI or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the most important law enforcement agencies in the United States of America, has therefore, been able to attain a much more important and a more prominent role in international affairs in recent times than ever before.

This is because of the fact that it has indeed been assigning more and more numbers of its agents overseas, for the purpose of not only expanding contacts with foreign governments so that more information could be obtained well in time about any types of potential and planned transnational threats to national security, but also to keep abreast of the latest relevant information about such threats. In the same way, the CIA, or the Central Intelligence Agency, and various other intelligence agencies are today devoting increasing amounts of time and energy and resources to issues of counter terrorism, and to anti-narcotics activities. One CIA official has stated that today, there is no real primacy for either law enforcement agencies or for the various intelligence communities as far as issues such as international terrorism, narcotics and drug trafficking, and so on is concerned. However, the fact is that law enforcement agencies and intelligence communities both remain operational and functional in basically dissimilar ways, and they also retain different legal authorities, and different modes of operation, and different paradigms for their governance.

The need of the day is therefore, to enhance a feeling of closer cooperation among law enforcement, and intelligence agencies in the United States of America, but the problems that come hand in hand with such an approach are manifold. For example, it is innately difficult to employ intelligence agencies for the purpose of laying the groundwork for criminal proceedings. At the same time, however, the decisions to consider certain serious threats to security from outside of the borders of America as being law enforcement issues presumes the fact that there are adequate legal channels in existence in both U.S. Law as well as in International Law, through which such issues could be satisfactorily resolved. The point is that if International Law is insufficiently developed, then it means that the extraterritorial reach of domestic statutes would naturally become quite limited. When law enforcement is utilized against international threats, then it would mean that non-legal instruments, like for example, the use of military force, or a covert action carried out by an intelligence agency, would be more often than not be considered as being less important, and this may result in its de-emphasis. In the year 1999, military force was deployed for the purpose of the protection of international issues, and law enforcement agencies were used for the purpose.

The United States Armed Forces undertook air strikes as a part of the 'North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Serbian Forces', and the purpose was to not only stop the destabilization of other Balkan countries by the numerous Serbian attacks being carried out on Kosovar Albanians, but also to arrest and put a stop to the numerous violations against international law, as well as the violations being carried out against humanity, as being a part of the so called 'ethnic cleansing' that had been organized in that country. The then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, stated that he felt that he had a 'moral responsibility' to put a stop to or to oppose crimes carried out against humanity, and to oppose religious cleansing and ethnic cleansing, and the mass and completely unjustified killings that went along with it.

What all this means today is that the strict distinction between law enforcement agencies and security issues are becoming more and more blurred and indistinguishable as time goes by, and this has become very evident in several instances wherein the numerous and different approaches to transnational issues seem to have become quite confusing, and also unproductive as a direct result. One example of this phenomenon was the incident in the year 1997, when the FBI assumed that it was the best for everyone concerned if it withheld certain information about illegal Chinese political contributions, from the Secretary of State before his proposed visit to Beijing in the same year. In the same manner, the United States offered support for certain dissident Iraqi troops during the mid-1990's, and this in fact led to a feeling of division and dissent among the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, and this in turn led to the violent and aggressive suppressions that occurred among those forces that considered themselves to be loyal to Saddam Hussein.

When the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were carried out by the Islamic militant outfit called Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, leading to more than thousands of innocent American citizens dead or permanently injured, the general feeling after that time was that there was a breach in the relationship between law enforcement and national security agencies, and perhaps this was what had led to the failure on their parts to gain an advance warning of the impending attack. Perhaps, there was inadequate exchange of information between them, or perhaps there was some other plausible reason. Although there were differing views on what exactly must be done to counter the attacks carried out by terrorists, the Bush administration made a quick decision, which was supported by a majority of the American population, which was that America must launch a military attack, which would in turn be supported by covert intelligence forces, on the Al Qaeda infrastructure that was present in Afghanistan.

An anti-terrorism legislation also came into being at the same time, according to which provisions had been made so that information could be shared between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Since there is no denying the fact that the role of law enforcement agencies will most definitely continue to grow, especially in the international arena, many individuals offer the opinion that a greater consideration must now be offered towards making less ambiguous and indefinite distinctions between law enforcement and security policies, and that if a sort of 'merger' were to be formed, then it would lead to an increased efficiency on the part of law enforcement.

It is an interesting fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was started in the year 1908, by attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, and the force was then called the 'Bureau of Investigation' or the BOI. This agency would handle all the mattes of the Department of Justice, and issues that came to its notice were land frauds, anti-trust matters, copyright violations, involuntary slavery, and so on and so forth. Over the next ten years, the authority for Federal Criminal agencies and for the jurisdiction rights for the Bureau of Investigation was extended considerably, and when the United States of America entered the World war, the bureau's jurisdiction was further increased. When in the year 1924 the then Attorney General Harlan Stone appointed John Edgar Hoover as the Director of the Bureau, the Bureau stated to emphasize the fact that it would offer its services to other law enforcement agencies as well. Therefore, the 'Identification Division' was formed in 1924, and this would help the U.S. Police agents a method by which they would be able to identify criminals across different jurisdictional boundaries.

The 'Technical Crime Laboratory' was created in the year 1932 and this would help in issues where forensic evidence was needed to identify a criminal, and it was used by law enforcement agents as well. The FBI National Academy was started in the year 1935, and this became the agency that would be responsible for the provision of training for the law enforcement officers of the United States of America. As incidences of crime and even the nature of crime changed and grew in America, the Congress started to give more and more authority and rights to the Bureau. The Bureau could therefore act in many new areas, and it could make arrest and officers could carry weapons. In 1935, the Bureau was officially named the 'Federal Bureau of Investigation'. It was in the year 1940 that the FBI was assigned the role of foreign intelligence in the Western hemisphere, and the role of the protection of domestic security in the United States.

Subsequently, in the year 2001, the Former U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller was appointed as the Director of the FBI, and he upgraded the infrastructure of the Bureau, addressed the various records management issues, and also enhanced foreign counterintelligence analysis, and the numerous security issues. After the devastating September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Patriot Act was signed in October 2001, and it became the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect the American citizens against future terrorist attacks. It is to this purpose that the FBI is today upgrading its basic technological infrastructure, with an increasing emphasis on computerization and modernization of its existing facilities, so that it would be able to serve its people better.

This leads to an important question: is technology very important in policing? Will technology and advancements be able to make more efficient people out of police, or will they become better and more humane technocrats? The fact is that the computer and all the related technical advancements has indeed made a headway into the law enforcement divisions everywhere in America, as well as in other parts of the world, and today, advancements in fingerprinting techniques, in the gathering of crime scene evidence, in crime reporting, record keeping, in crime analyses, in solving high tech crimes, and so on and so forth. It must be remembered that technology can be used for both good and bad purposes, and when it is indeed used in an appropriate manner, then there is no doubt that the criminal justice system would benefit from its use.

However, technology brings with it certain important advantages, some of which are: law enforcement becomes proactive as a result of advanced technology. This means that now law enforcement would be able to avail of a much wider network, called a 'crime mapping net' wherein the location or the scene of a crime, before it has even taken place, would be available to law enforcement agents, and this would mean that police cars can be dispatched to those geographic areas that have been demonstrated by a computer model of the entire area of the city, and the agents would have the advantage of being present at the proposed scene of crime before it actually happens, and this would make it infinitely easier for them to apprehend the criminals. The problem in this method is that courts have not yet decided whether or not computer algorithms can be taken as being sufficient grounds for 'search and seizure', or for 'stop and frisk'. Computer usage in the law enforcement departments would also be able to offer the advantage of better surveillance techniques, better lay detection tests, and in criminal trials, the computer can be used for the purpose of video conferencing.

It is through advancements made in the apprehension of criminals and terrorists through technology related to modern computers that one FBI official was heard quoted as stating that when Bush wrote the U.S. Patriot Law soon after the terrorist attack on America, he was, in fact, heading in exactly the direction that Osama would have wanted him to do, and that was the 'all-out confrontation' with Islam, under the blanket of democracy.

The FBI Director, Robert Mueller has stated that since crime and terrorism have in fact become global phenomenon and are not merely localized occurrences, and they also involve transnational borders and numerous agencies and officers to apprehend the culprits, law enforcement must today, demonstrate more cooperation, on a global scale. The Director said that the types of threats that one faces today are with an increasingly international nature, and some of these crimes are telemarketing scandals, identity frauds and thefts, the incorporation of computer viruses, corporate espionage, drug and weapons trafficking, and even trafficking in human beings. Therefore, all this inevitably means that the various and numerous boundaries and divisions that used to exist between different division of law enforcement, including responsibility and jurisdiction for the crimes are now becoming more and more meaningless. For example, the FBI today, has about 47 legal attaches, or what are known as 'legats', all around the world, and it is these legats that with their effectiveness and efficiency are managing to stop crime and terrorism from being exported to the United States of America.