Police officials in Providence, Rhode Island, are beginning to express doubts about whether the imperative to protect domestic security from terrorism has blinded federal authorities to other priorities. The department is battling homicides, robberies and gang shootings that the police in a number of cities say are as serious a threat as terrorism. From the New York Times
Nearly seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the war on terror in this city has evolved into a quiet struggle against a phantom foe. Last year, when a sailor slipped over the side of a Turkish merchant ship in the city’s port, a Providence police detective assigned to a joint terrorism task force was quickly alerted, reflecting a new vigilance since the Sept. 11 attacks. Alerts also went out to immigration, customs, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, but the case went cold.
The Providence police chief, Col. Dean M. Esserman believes the federal government is unable to balance antiterror efforts and crime fighting. Echoing Bill Bratton‘s comments last year, Esserman argues that the federal government is like a Cyclops which can focus only on one problem at a time: “The support we had from the federal government for crime fighting seems like it is being diverted to homeland defense – it may be time to reassess, not how to dampen one for the other, but how not to lose support for one as we address the other.”
Over the years since, police officials in Providence joined with state and federal authorities in new information-sharing projects, met with local Muslim leaders and urged their officers to be alert for anything suspicious. Flush with federal domestic-security grants, the police department acquired millions of dollars’ worth of hardware and enrolled officers in training courses to detect and respond to a terrorist attack.
