Leader Outrage fatigue
As a citizen sometimes it is hard to keep up. At the moment, it seems that we are constantly being reminded to change our Facebook profile picture, pray for someone, or observe a minute’s silence. We have recently had terrorist van attacks on London Bridge, Westminster Bridge and at Finsbury Park mosque, we have had a bomb attack in Manchester and a massive tower block fire. In Paris the police were attacked with a vehicle filled with propane, and Brussels has seen another assault on its public transport system. Meanwhile the emergency services, which include the military in places like France and Belgium, are largely underfunded, undermanned and asked to do more than a liberal democracy can endure.
What does all this mean to CBRNE? The first element has to be that the training for the ‘day job’ comes first. When perusing the curriculum of the New York State Preparedness Center in Oriskany, I was told the reason there was less CBR on it than they had previously expected was that the requests following the San Bernadino attack had all been for active shooter.
So it goes.
Tackling the current threat is not necessarily a bad idea, it provides an improved response to what the media are screaming about today. In the light of what is happening it's necessary to ask whether the future will look like the present. I would suggest that the Finsbury Park mosque attack is a troubling forewarning for what might be.
Darren Osborne, the driver of the van that killed one and injured 11, has been described (much like other attackers) as being mentally disturbed and self- radicalised. Meanwhile Manchester, the scene of the Ariana Grande bombing, has seen hate crimes soar (
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/22/ islamophobic-attacks-manchester-increase-arena- attack). Much in the way that there tends to be a split along racial lines in types of crime (burglary, for example, tends to be a ‘white crime’
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the- u.s.-2011/tables/table-43), I would suggest that recent evidence points to the fact that crimes using exotic substances are more prevalent among white right wing groups.
While there is a steady drip of all races looking to murder their significant others etc, the surge in cases comes from white supremacist organisations that are attempting to cause terror (http://abcnews.
go.com/US/wireStory/georgia-man-charged-possession- ricin-deadly-toxin-45684332 et al). This is absolutely not to deny that Muslim fundamentalists are trying to create or buy toxins, just that the current case history points to white supremacists.
This means that among the inevitable knife and vehicle attacks, law enforcement will have to be prepared for backlash attacks from white groups most likely using ricin or abrin. For US officials this is nothing new, as they regularly deal with this threat, it is not the case for much of Europe where 'white powders' are generally considered benign and treated with less caution. But these organisations share as much information as the Muslim fundamentalists do, and all the concern about sharing tradecraft on one side is equally true for the other.
It is also worth focussing on the fact that individuals have left Europe (et al) to fight in the Syrian conflict and been radicalised on both sides of the conflict. Law enforcement has to deal with damaged individuals that want to kill non-Muslim people AND damaged individuals that want to kill Sunni/Salafist Muslim people. Indeed it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to see friends of individuals who were killed by Daesh chemical attacks deciding that they want to inflict the same harm on the Muslims they believe to have funded the terrorism in the Levant.
Use of vehicles as weapons was a surprise to the counter terrorist community, we cannot allow the use of toxic industrial chemicals to have the same impact. Yes, we have prepared for that for the past 15 years… but have we really? Have we prepared for it in the same way that forces have for marauding terrorist firearms attacks or knife attacks – as a real threat, rather than a theoretical one?
In these times of high threat, and low funding, the bulk of the effort has to be on what is happening today, and that is only correct. Yet when it comes to that ‘what next’ there has to be an appreciation that the profile and experience of some of the attackers points towards a non-conventional threat. It can no longer be categorised as ‘high-risk, low-probability.’
www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017
www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017
June 2017 CBRNe WORLD
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