Terrorism Officers On Patrol in Arizona
July 12, 2008 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Terrorism liaison officers have been getting a lot of attention in the national press lately. But the bottom line of what they do is basically old-fashioned police work, according to the state police coordinating the effort in Arizona.
The TLOs, as they are called, keep their eyes and ears open for any suspicious activity.
The three-year-old program is part of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and its Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, the state’s intelligence fusion center. The 75 to 80 TLOs are specially trained police officers, firefighters and police crime analysts. They report suspicious behavior they see in the course of their jobs. The reports are put in the state database for further investigation, and could be sent to federal terrorist databases.
DPS Lt. Larry Perry, the man in charge of Arizona’s TLOs, thinks they are necessary. Although he admits their jobs include a concept that all police officers and firefighters should follow, he says TLOs have learned a lot more than that during 40 hours of special training.
“This is situational awareness where people who work in critical infrastructures throughout the state are reporting suspicious activities,” Perry said. “TLOs are not getting information on private citizens in their homes. This is a speciality unit that links TLOs together for the purpose of reporting suspicious activity.”
Good, all states should have them ,so should security companies
I’m glad to see that Arizona is being proactive in soliciting information on activities that could be part of a larger picture. If we have all the pieces of the puzzle and the TLO’s can put the puzzle together we will be much safer. That is how most crimes are solved. Hindsight is 20/20 but it is foresight that we need to improve upon. Most criminal/terroristic acts are…a puzzle, with all the pieces available. All that is needed is the right person to see it in the proper form. Keep up the good work.