The New York Police Department is taking new aim at homegrown fanatics in its investigations of potential terrorists, says the New York Daily News. Spot checks of bags and backpacks at key transit stops are a fact of life now. The Hydra-like world of violent Islamic extremism has forced the NYPD to adapt, said Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism Michael Sheehan. “These radical groups use Islam to recruit and motivate; now we will have a better understanding of the types of ideology that lead to violence and militancy,” he said.
In a program under way in a secret Brooklyn warehouse, streetwise cops are schooled in the variations of militant Islamic ideology by a cadre of academics more comfortable in think tanks than on firing ranges. Daniel Rudder, an Ivy League-educated “intelligence research specialist,” conducted his first seminar last week for 15 cops and civilians on “The Evolution of Militant Sunni Ideology.” “This is a historical study, of how different ideologies have twisted Islam,” Rudder, 28, told a class that included young detectives. Rudder and seven other analysts hired in April have been poring over research and intelligence gleaned from confidential informants, interrogations, surveillance of criminal suspects, and the department’s terrorism hotline. Rudder produced a 135-page report, the backbone of the training program for investigators in the Joint Terrorist Task Force and Intelligence, which explores topics such as transnational Islamic militancy.
Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/351733p-299825c.html