After the latest terror attacks in London, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton activated a contingency plan in Los Angeles, and called other big-city police chiefs, who were meeting in Chicago for a meeting of antiterror defenses, so they could do likewise, the Boston Globe reports. Bratton and leaders of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) were meeting to discuss a series of homeland security issues, including information sharing.
Bratton and other chiefs are planning to create an instantaneous information network, so that police chiefs across the U.S. and Canada can receive information to respond promptly to attacks that may happen thousands of miles away. In Chicago, Bratton and three other chiefs — Philip Cline of Chicago, Charles Ramsey of Washington, D.C., and Sheriff William Young of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — drew on their own sources to respond to the London attacks. “All of our eyes were really opened in Chicago,” said PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler. “There’s a difference between intelligence and information. These chiefs need to know: ‘What can I do now?’ The idea emerged that we need the kind of mechanism to link to each other, even though the information might not be corroborated, or completely accurate. What the chiefs get from FBI and Homeland Security is important, but this is about immediacy.” Wexler said Motorola, Inc. will help devise a single communications system.
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