Since twentieth century terrorism has been viewed as one of most crucial global problems and significant threat to security at international, national and local level. Lots of strategies have been developed at varied levels to prevent terroristic attacks. Nonetheless, taking into account ever developing nature of contemporary terrorism threat, building terrorism resistant communities has still been viewed as a really difficult tasks, which requires elaborating on effective multidisciplinary approaches. According to Ekici, Ekici, Mcentrie and Arlikatti (2009), by the beginning of 21st century both police science and practice in different countries have developed a variety of methods to incorporate business and communities into combating crime and maintaining public order including team policing, community policing and problem oriented policing, so that police-community and police-business partnerships can be established to ensure early concern reporting and effective prevention. Different methods have been developed to help law enforcement agencies not to become distracted by high-profile incidents, capturing significant public attention, so that their effective investigation is not prevented by distraction and occupational stress in the law enforcement (Millie&Das, 2008).
Despite earlier proved efficiency of community and problem oriented policing, after September, 11th police-community and police-business partnerships were almost fully substituted by Homeland Security methods, namely complicated tactics, technology, intelligence gathering and detecting potential threats. Nonetheless, it is still important to combine methods, mentioned above, with traditional effective community and problem-oriented policing approaches.
As for businesses, particular ones are especially vulnerable to being targeted by terrorists. These ones are those, which produce goods and services, which are often required by terrorists in their activities. Among them it is, first of all, worth mentioning those, which are busy with producing weapons, weapons-related goods, vehicles etc. and delivering security or medical services. These businesses are most vulnerable in terms of terrorists` seeking to purchase goods or getting services from them. As for information, terrorists are likely to seek it from businesses, which are involved in organization of high-profile events, transportation and security. Abovementioned businesses` HR and facilities can also be of interest for terrorists. It is hard to establish any kind of monitoring these businesses` contacts by local law enforcement agencies without infringing basic civil liberties. Therefore, the only both lawful and reliable method to ensure monitoring of above-mentioned businesses` contacts is establishing businesses-police partnership.
In case business owners and community notice something suspicious, they should immediately report their concerns to police. Community policing strategies are believed to be most important tool to establish effective communication between police and communities. To ensure true implementation of community policing concept, it is worth elaborating on programs of assigning particular police officers to specific geographic locations for prolonged periods of time; matching officers with neighborhood; incorporating community policing criteria into systems of performance evaluation and reward; training staff on communication with business owners and community activists; increasing officers` discretion and accountability etc. (Newman&Clarke, 2010). Furthermore, effective monitoring programs should be introduced to tackle challenges in community policing programs and meeting them. Community policing programs will be of significant importance for gaining trust of community, acquiring knowledge about target most at risk and establishing closer ties with business, so they should lead to facilitating business owners` and community members` readiness to alert their suspicions and concerns to law enforcement agencies in the fullest and most timely manner possible.
Ensuring effective communication between community members (business owners) and police is a key to timely information sharing. There are two kinds of programs, which can help to ensure effectiveness of such information flows. The first kind unites programs, which are aimed at establishing basis for effective policing, namely team- and trust-building ones, whereas the second one deals with providing technical means for effective communication. Trust- and team-building events, launched by police, for community members and business owners, can be really effective with respect to facilitating community watch campaigns as during these events community members and business owners will get extra awareness about the way terrorist activities are likely to influence both the life of the community and their own business or activities. Furthermore, these events can be aimed at raising awareness about the effectiveness of community watch programs, so that they themselves can realize importance of building community watch partnerships, making effective use of community resources.
The use of information technologies is necessary tool to ensure practical implementation of information sharing partnership programs, uniting police with community and business owners with respect to combating terrorism need. Technology solutions, which have proved themselves to be effective in community-oriented policing, include police`s permanent online presence through the use of both websites and social media tools, using crime analytic software (records management systems, capable of capturing all the details of reports, which are being made), introducing contemporary mobile devices and video technology into everyday activities in order to establish mobile communication system. Furthermore, as for information sharing, it is worth considering the chance of using systems such as COPLINK, which allows timely and full access to crime-related data, visualizing data with the help of maps, creating data stores and data sharing (IBM, 2013).
References
Ekici, S., Ekici, A.,Mcentrie, D., Arlikatti, S.S.(eds.) (2009). Building terrorism resistant communities : together against terrorism.Washington, D.C.: IOS Press
IBM (2013). COPLINK. Retrieved 26 September 2013 from http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/coplink/
Millie, A., Das, D.K. (eds.) (2008). Contemporary issues in law enforcement and policing. Broken: CRC Press
Newman, G.R., Clarke, R.V. G (2010). Policing terrorism: an executive guide. Washington, D.C.:DIANE Publishing
