Kathleen O’Reilly EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This research focuses on the challenges facing police today, with agencies being asked to stretch their finite resources to address an ever-increasing threat to homeland security. In New York City (NYC), the requisite shift in manpower and resources to necessary counterterrorism efforts resulted in a shift in the New York…
CHDS Theses: Executive Summaries
Problem-Solving in Homeland Security and Creating Policy Conditions for Enhanced Civic Engagement: An Examination of Crowdsourcing Models
Raymond Bisogno EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This thesis begins with the premise that the world has become a more dangerous and complicated place due to the spread of terrorism, increasingly damaging weather events, and other threats to national and economic security. These threats (in their broadest sense) have become more diffuse, and the challenges government faces to…
Westerner Radicalization: Rethinking the Psychology of Terrorism
Vernon Pierson EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and began shooting. During the attack, Mateen paused to call a local television station, make a call to 911, and pledge allegiance to ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) on social media. During the calls, he…
From Third-Degree to Third-Generation Interrogation Methodologies: Putting Science into the Art of Criminal Interviewing
Desmond O’Neill EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Criminal interrogations are fundamentally designed to elicit confessions.[1] Beginning with the proliferation of physically abusive and aggressive tactics in the early 20th century—arguably the first generation of American interrogation strategies—law-enforcement agents employed what they deemed the most effective means for getting suspects to confess.[2] In the early 1940s, harsh “third-degree” interrogation…
Lawful Hacking: Toward a Middle Ground Solution to the Going Dark Problem
Hoaithi Nguyen EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since the spring of 2013, when Edward Snowden leaked classified information regarding the National Security Agency’s (NSA) covert collection of telephony metadata from major communications providers, such Internet giants as Apple and Google have rolled out end-to-end encryption on their devices. End-to-end encryption means that “only the recipient of the message…
Bridging the Gap: To What Extent Do Socioeconomic Barriers Impede Response to Emerging Public Health Threats?
Don Neuert EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The basis for this thesis and research topic stems from certain local and state Public Health Emergency Preparedness grant activities—managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—focused on jurisdictions’ ability to dispense life-saving medications and medical supplies to 100 percent of an impacted population within 48 hours of a…
Homeland Security in Absentia: Policing Miami in the Era of the New U.S.-Cuba Relationship
Manuel Morales EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The United States and Cuba are separated by 90 miles across the Florida Straits, but are worlds apart in political ideology. In 2014, President Barack Obama announced his administration’s intention to renew diplomatic relations with this nation’s island neighbor.[1] The detente marked a stark departure from previous U.S. policy of isolation…
Embracing the Devil: An Analysis of the Formal Adoption of Red Teaming in the Security Planning for Major Events
Thomas Landry EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) takes the lead or significant supporting security role in many of the nation’s largest and most celebrated events across the country. These political, sporting, and cultural events present the nation’s adversaries with inviting targets due to the size, scope, and historical significance of the occasions.…
Adaptive Standard Operating Procedures for Complex Disasters
Shawn Harwood EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The nature of disasters has evolved, but emergency management has not kept pace with the change. Today’s crisis environment is subject to countless influences—a product of our globalized, complex society—which produce random and volatile events. Despite the unpredictability of modern disasters, the Homeland Security Enterprise still adheres to prediction-dependent standard operating…
A Framework for Violence: Clarifying the Role of Motivation in Lone-Actor Terrorism
Jacob Hallgarth EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Preventing domestic terrorism continues to be a major goal for homeland security practitioners. Yet many of our traditional counterterrorism techniques have proven inadequate to prevent one particular manifestation of terrorism: the lone actor. No network exists to infiltrate the lone-actor threat—there are no communications to intercept, no information to task informants,…