John Murray EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Trust and the establishment of legitimacy are essential to building strong relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Distrust of the police can lead to a lack of community involvement, an unwillingness to assist law enforcement with investigations, and in some cases, a perception of the police not as…
CHDS Theses: Executive Summaries
U.S. Refugee Policy in the Era of Homeland Security: A Comparative Government Analysis
Reiss Kuczera EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since the 20th century, America has seized opportunities to lead the international community and subsequently claim global power status and influence. It proved its military might in both world wars, and for decades, it has championed human rights around the world. Although humanitarian policies often serve the country’s self-interests politically, humanitarian…
Dashboards for the Fire Service
Alan Butsch EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The purpose of this thesis project was to examine how to best to use principles of modern Business Intelligence (BI) and dashboards to support real-time decision making and performance improvement in a modern fire service agency. The problem that this project attempted to solve is the disconnect between personnel and organizational…
The Reality of the DHS Enterprise Field Intelligence Information Sharing Environment
Michael Brown EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Terrorist attacks such as those between 2014 and early 2017 in Garland, San Bernardino, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Seaside, and Chelsea highlight the increased challenge of preventing terrorist and homegrown violent extremists in the Homeland. At its core, the challenge for information sharing involves how federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal counterterrorism…
Follow the Silk Road: How Internet Affordances Influence and Transform Crime and Law Enforcement
Ryan Jerde EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This thesis studies the changing typology of border-related crime being driven by Internet technologies. Internet technologies are moving elements of crime, understood to be physical, to the digital realm. Drug trafficking, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and money laundering are some of the crimes being facilitated by Internet technologies. The evolution…
An Arizona Border Wall Case Study
Justin Bristow EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A recurring question regarding U.S. border security is how effective a wall is in terms of investment and utility. The comments are many, from the wall providing a deterrent and preventing illegal border crossings to resourceful smugglers finding ways to circumvent the wall completely. The purpose of the wall is to…
Pre-Incident Planning for the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Troy Hughes EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Department of Energy (DOE) operates seventeen national laboratories across the United States. These laboratories conduct scientific research across a wide spectrum of topics, including the environment, health, computing, and national security. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) focuses on national security. LANL was established in 1943, and its staff work to…
The Arctic: A Wait and See Approach to Defending the Homeland
Bill Hegedusich EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In 1859, Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States hoping it would balance the power in the Pacific between them and Great Britain, and strengthen their relationship with the United States and bring about a “desirous of strengthening, if possible, the good understanding which exists between” the United States…
Prospective Vigilance: Assessing Complex Coordinated Attack Preparedness Programs
Jared Goff EXECUTIVE SUMMARY State and local first responders in the United States lack a common strategic approach to preparing for complex coordinated attacks (CCAs).[1] Scholarly research, analysis, and shared best practices are important pillars to help first responders become better prepared and resilient, yet these components are mostly absent from the CCA narrative. Inconsistent…
A Proposed Cosmology of Identity in The Sociotechnical Ecosystem of Homeland Security
Gerard Sevan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The thesis explores how technology and social identity interact in the context of homeland security. Emerging ideas on technologically dependent and enhanced humans raise important ontological questions about current theories of identity, culture, and society and how a new identity paradigm creates security threats.[1] There is currently no agreement on the…