Impact on Law Enforcement essay
The terrorism has affected American law enforcement by bringing changes into it. The changes became more vivid especially after the September 11, 2001. American citizens were used to the security, that doesn’t exist any more. A lot of changes were made in law enforcement since the 9/11 attacks. The focus has been mainly on security. In order to limit or exclude the future attacks the government created measures to monitor the internet, airports and country borders. Americans don’t have any more the freedom that they were used to in the past. Nowadays Americans should be more attentive to their surroundings; know better the world issues and know what could happen later in the future if the terrorist attacks are ever forgotten. After the attacks of terrorists on 9/11, the agencies of law enforcement made several steps such as increasing the quantity of personnel involved in emergency response planning; renovating response plans for radiological, chemical and biological attacks; signing new mutual aid agreements; increasing departmental spending to focus on terrorism readiness and changing the location of internal resources. All these things were made under the influence of terrorism attack possibility.
Before the terrorist attack of 9/11, only few local law enforcement agencies experienced the accidents, related to terrorism; but after 9/11, nearly all governmental agencies and the half of local agencies worked on responding to terrorist-related incidents. The response burden was rather high for these agencies. It was the kind of crime that agencies were not ready to cope with.
The terrorist attacks were a reason for increased amount of assessment activities, especially at the local level. Here is an example: before the 9th of September 2001 only one fourth of local agencies within smaller counties had made a risk assessment; and during one year after the attacks, nearly three fourth had done so. There have been made many changes since the terrorism appeared. Now people feel safer, knowing that law enforcement is more attentive and is ready to prevent terrorist attacks. So, the terrorist attacks, especially events of 9/11 were tragic and that is why the pain people feel will never be forgotten.
