UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Justice and Safety Institute (JASI) has developed a new course to provide law enforcement officers with skills to recognize potential terrorist activity in their jurisdictions.
"These skills are important for all levels of law enforcement, including local officers patrolling the streets,” said Ahmet S. Yayla, director of the Center for Homeland Security at DeSales University and associate professor of homeland security. “In the United States, the local police are the eyes of the government and law enforcement. It is the local law enforcement who are on the street, interacting with people day to day. So, in many cases, law enforcement becomes the point of preventing the threats that are happening locally. If these law enforcement agencies do not know how to look for those threats, they are going to miss them.”
Yayla has teamed with JASI to serve as instructor for the new course to give law enforcement officers the tools they need to understand and identify these threats and keep communities safe.
The first offering of the five-session counterterrorism and intelligence course will take place from Dec. 8 to 12 at the Reading Police Academy and is open to all law enforcement personnel.
The training will immerse participants in the operational realities of modern terrorism, exploring ideological foundations, recruitment pipelines, attack planning, financing and tactical disruption and will examine emerging threats such as artificial intelligence-generated propaganda and drone-enabled attacks.
JASI instructor Charles Rapp said the course is one example of how JASI is helping to prepare law enforcement officers, in Pennsylvania and beyond, for the challenges of modern policing.
“Many departments and agencies, especially smaller ones, don’t have the time or resources to provide training like this,” Rapp said. “By teaming with expert instructors and identifying emerging trends, we are continually looking to provide educational resources that support departments and help law enforcement officers be prepared with the tools and tactics they need to keep communities safe. Agencies typically focus on response to incidents, but it is more effective to prevent an incident.”
During the course, Yayla will lean on his vast experience in the field to provide insight for officers. A 20-year veteran of the Turkish National Police Counterterrorism and Operations Department, Yayla led the Şanlıurfa Counterterrorism Division from 2010 to 2013 during one of the most turbulent periods of terrorist activity in the region’s history.
He said he learned an important lesson early in his career as he worked to arrest terrorists who committed violent acts.
“It was a vicious cycle, because as soon as they were arrested, their siblings or close friends were being recruited into that terrorist organization, not because of their ideology, but because they lost their loved ones and were so emotional, so they were very easily radicalized,” Yayla said.
After seeing this play out, time after time, Yayla said he turned his focus on preventing future attacks through regular law enforcement tactics. Step one is knowing and understanding the communities you are policing.
“The use of force must be the last resort because if you do not win the hearts of the people, you cannot convince them not to be radicalized,” Yayla said.
While Yayla’s career has been focused on international terrorism, this course will also examine the rising threat of domestic terrorist groups in the United State. The goal is to provide officers with the tools needed so they can work to identify threats no matter their origins.
“Knowledge is the most important tool. I hope they will gain a better understanding of how to approach and protect people,” Yayla said. “Most importantly, they will see what is happening in their jurisdictions from the eye of a counterterrorism expert. This will help them to better protect their communities.”