Wednesday, March 12, 2008

LA Opens Counterterrorism Academy

So apparently after the Muslim Mapping incident didn't work they still decided to go ahead with their plan of creating a Counterterrorism Academy. With that $5 million dollar budget they could have done so many other things for the community, but it's the police department we're talking about here and the state what else would we expect right? LAPD already abuses its powers imagine now they will have religious profiling to add to their means of acceptable profiling. Anyway here are some excerpts from the article:

"Trying to make Los Angeles a focal point for counterterrorism efforts, LAPD Chief William Bratton on Monday opened what's being billed as the first National Counter-Terrorism Academy.

Partnering with the Manhattan Institute, Bratton intends to take the initial $1 million step to teach local law enforcement about the roots of terrorism and how to combat it nationally over the coming year.

The federal government can't protect the country on its own, he said, noting, "The potential threat of terrorism is much more real now than it was in the 20th century. What is necessary is to actually police terrorism. That's where local police come. There are 700,000 of us in local cities."

"The five-month course takes midlevel managers from 30 local agencies including the Los Angeles Fire and Long Beach Police departments and the FBI through the historical roots of terrorism to culturally sensitive interviewing techniques."

The idea is to teach them how to recognize terrorist cells and eventually build regional intelligence.

Courses include lessons on religious extremism, homegrown terror groups, the evolution of al-Qaida and reading assignments from Lawrence Wright's "Looming Tower," an in-depth look at the events leading up to 9-11 and the breakdown of American intelligence.""

Read the whole article here.



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