Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.
Editorial |
Policing Terrorism
* Professor of Social Policy, University of Wolverhampton. E-mail: P.A.J.Waddington{at}wlv.ac.uk
This inaugural issue of Policing: a Journal of Policy and Practice launches with a bang. First, it is devoted to the topic that is at the top of policing agendas throughout the world: the response to global mass–casualty terrorism, epitomized by, but far from restricted to, the attacks of September 11 2001. Secondly, it sets a precedent for what we hope will be the defining characteristic of this journal: an informed conversation between practitioners and academics. That conversation is built–in to the editorship of this journal: I am delighted to share the editorial role with Peter Neyroud, not only a successful former chief constable of two significant British police forces and now Chief Executive of the British National Police Improvements Agency, but also an intellectual—the author of a highly–regarded book on police ethics (Neyroud, 2003). Largely as a result of Peter's efforts, this issue is fortunate to have secured contributions from very distinguished and knowledgeable police officers and members of the intelligence and security services. I take credit for having persuaded some of the most prominent scholars working in this area to contribute a variety of academic perspectives to the debate. We want to extend the conversation as far as possible across the police community and to encourage contributions from those less exulted than the contributors to this issue. To facilitate this for those who might feel intimidated in putting pen to paper or who simply don't have the time, we extend the offer of their being interviewed by the editors and for the interview to be published. Truth is no respecter of rank and contributions from all police officers are encouraged. Anyone considering doing so is free to contact me at p.a.j.waddington@wlv.ac.uk to discuss their contribution.
It is not common for police officers of any rank to reflect, appraise and analyse upon their professional practice. Quite why this is so is unclear, but may have something to do with a point made in passing in Professor Brodeur's review (in this issue) of the literature on ‘high policing’: police intelligence, he observes, focuses upon individual wrongdoers and is directed to establishing their guilt of specific offences, whereas the security services are often less concerned with the prosecution and conviction of individuals than they are with disrupting and undermining activities that threaten the state. This case–specific approach of policing not only focuses on individuals rather than wider patterns and processes, it terminates with the verdict of the court. Skills and knowledge are experiential—been there, done it—rather than reflectively analytical. However that impedes the professional development of policing policy and practice. For police do not only deal with specific cases that go before the courts, policing involves general deployments based upon some notion of what the task is and how best it can be achieved. What is that task? Too often it is unquestionably assumed that the task is crime–fighting or law enforcement. Sometimes it is dimly recognized that it also embraces crime prevention, but this is equally unquestionably assumed to be the outcome of crime–fighting and law enforcement. Genuine reflection on policing policy and practice involves being prepared to question these verities and that is the mission of this journal.
In questioning fundamental assumptions there are few better places to begin than with terrorism, security and intelligence, for not only are these matters of intense public and professional concern, but they raise acute issues and problems as the article in this issue attest. For these are all matters of ‘high policing’. Twenty five years ago Jean–Paul Brodeur published his corrective to the then emerging academic consensus that policing was the social and moral equivalent of ‘street cleaning’: the routine business of petty crime, drunkenness and drug addiction, domestic violence, and the rest (Brodeur, 1983). He pointed to another higher level at which the police operate—the defence of the state. It is a comforting myth (that police do little to dispel) that policing serves ‘the public’, whereas in fact everywhere police forces are state institutions ultimately serve their paymasters. In Britain, the symbol of the Crown adorns virtually every police uniform and any threat to the Monarch and her heirs acquires unparalleled concern. Thus, when an intruder (Michael Fagan) gained access to Buckingham Palace in 1982 and police guarding the palace were slow to respond to the Queen's call for help, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir David McNee, felt obliged to tender his resignation (albeit that it was not accepted). Yet, Fagan had committed only the most petty of criminal offences, and posed no threat to the life or well being of the Queen. It was not the criminal seriousness of what he had done or even might have done, but the violation of the sanctity of the Monarchy, the symbol of the British state, that provoked the offer of resignation from the Commissioner. More seriously, whilst terrorism can inflict significant loss of life (most notably on September 11 2001), it is not the scale of the atrocities committed in its name that gives terrorism its special status, it is the threat that it poses to the state, for it undermines the basis of state legitimation—the capacity to protect its citizens.
Whilst it is currently fashionable for intellectuals to pour scorn on President George W. Bush's characterization of American foreign and domestic policy as the pursuit of a ‘War on Terror’, there is reason to consider seriously the distinction between criminal acts, on the one hand, and warfare, on the other. For this distinction mirrors that between the police and military as the joint custodians of the state's monopoly of legitimate force. Implicit in the distinction is that the military fights wars, whereas the police enforce the law and pursue criminals. Terrorism blurs that distinction: it differs significantly from the generality of crimes: it is committed by those who believe themselves to be dedicated to a higher cause, in pursuit of which they are often willing to suffer the risk (or in the case of ‘suicide bombers’, the certainty) of grievous injury or death. Those killed, maimed, injured and traumised by terrorism are not selected for reasons of individual animosity, but because they serve or are citizens of the state that the terrorist wishes to influence or destroy.
Yet, if terrorism is distinguishable from crime, it also fails to fit standard definitions of warfare that reflect the kind of armed conflicts between ‘Westphalian’ states. There is more to this than simply conceptual confusion: as combatants in an armed conflict, terrorists behave like military combatants in war. They employ the basic tactic of warfare—deception. Just as soldiers wear ‘disruptive pattern’ camouflage battle fatigues to blend into their surroundings, so terrorists disguise themselves amongst the civil population. Not only do they do so physically (wearing clothing and adopting lifestyles that do not draw attention to themselves), but also legally by exploiting the gap between the dichotomous opposition of ‘crime’ and ‘war’. If terrorism truly is ‘war by other means’ (to misquote Clauswitz), then there is no obligation on the security services to arrest rather than kill their enemy. When two Provisional IRA active service units unwittingly drove into an SAS ambush at Loughgall in 1986 there is little indication that they were invited to surrender. In traditional military style, the concealed ambushers open fire, riddling a van the terrorists had used to convey them to the location with gunfire and killing occupants whom they could not possibly have seen (Urban, 1992). This is how war is conducted: before opening fire, A10 ‘tank–buster’ crews don't call upon the occupants of enemy armoured vehicles to surrender. Yet, criminals are afforded more generous treatment: the onus is upon the police to demonstrate that use of lethal force is necessary as a last resort. Simultaneously laying claim to both combatant status and the rights afforded to criminal suspects, injects ambiguity into the relationship between terrorists and agents of the state. Hence, the successful appeal to the European Court of Human Rights by the relatives of those killed at Loughgall.
The response of police and security services worldwide has been to deny terrorists invisibility by increasing surveillance and intelligence. Like an AWACS aircraft, the aim is to identify enemy threats against the background ‘clutter’ of the terrain in which they operate. This entails being alert to tell–tale signals and recognizing their significance. Intelligence directs the gaze of the security services towards those amongst the civil population amongst whom threats are most likely to emerge. However, this is a venture prone to two types of deeply damaging errors: first, there is the inevitability of failure, for the terrorist is the epitome of a stealth attacker. The computers aboard an AWACS aircraft spot attacking low flying aircraft by ignoring the ‘clutter’ of, say, wave motion on the open sea. They are able to do this because the motion of waves is sufficiently well understood that it can be discounted, leaving the attackers revealed and vulnerable to counter–attack. The security services cannot so easily discount the ‘clutter’ of information coming from the behaviour of the population. Until the moment they launched their fateful and fatal attacks on 11 September none of the al–qaeda terrorists had done anything to distinguish themselves from the background ‘clutter’ of thousands of others. Learning to fly aircraft without paying attention to taking off and landing is bizarre, but temptingly discounted as the indulgence of a bunch of ‘rich kids’ with time on their hands. Yet, in retrospect, however, it is regarded as a flagrant ‘intelligence failure’ to be officially denounced, and thus epitomizes the inability of the state to protect its citizens. Hence, state institutions dutifully inflict upon their own state the ideological damage that terrorists desire.
Secondly, in order to prevent such an ‘intelligence failure’, the security services become hyper–suspicious. Insofar as that suspicion alights on everyone then its intrusiveness can be regarded as oppressive and a denial of privacy. Yet, if suspicion is directed at those belonging to particular sections of the population (such as Muslims), then it can readily be characterized as prejudicial and discriminatory. Either way, it is a violation of the ‘social contract’ between the citizen and the state. When the stakes are as high as they have become in an era of mass casualty terrorism, the security services and police feel duty bound to intervene at a lower threshold of suspicion than they would otherwise consider justified. Increasingly, the innocent, along with the guilty, experience the frightening reality of anti–terrorist operations and the ‘social contract’ is undermined even further. To this dilemma there seems only one practical answer: to increase surveillance and obtain intrusive intelligence in the hope of distinguishing terrorists from the population at large. Often this is at the behest of ‘public opinion’ led by parliamentary and media critics. Nevertheless, it too represents an intrusion into privacy that undermines the value of the liberty that the state is sworn to defend.
Just as terrorism obscures the binary opposition of ‘crime’ and ‘war’, so the state's response also blurs the distinction. Fake identity is the stock in trade of subversives and of fraudsters alike, and technologies designed to authenticate identity have burgeoned. ‘Surveillance’ is normally equated with ubiquitous CCTV cameras, but as several of our contributors point out, it extends far beyond the camera lens. The ability of state agencies to monitor legitimate private transactions also intrudes into privacy.
In conclusion, allow me to note that the blurring of the crime/war dichotomy is not only the accomplishment of the state. In order to pursue his illegal corporate interests in cocaine supply, Palo Escobar reputedly assassinated state officials who he failed to corrupt, detonated bombs in public places, destroyed a passenger aircraft in flight, and committed many other actions commonly described as ‘terrorism’ (Bowden, 2001). In a world of global commerce, increasingly hosting failed and failing states, the prospect that criminal networks will learn the lessons of their terrorist counterparts should not be discounted.
References
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Bowden M. Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the Richest, Most Powerful Criminal in History (2001) London: Atlantic.
Brodeur J.-P. High Policing and Low Policing: Remarks about the Policing of Political Activities. Social Problems (1983) 30:507–520.[ISI]
Neyroud P. Handbook of Policing—Newburn T., ed. (2003) Collumpton: Willan. 578–602. Policing and Ethics.
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