Vegas fusion center fights terrorism, street crime

LAS VEGAS — When a tip arrived about a threat of violence at a southern Nevada high school football game, a Clark County School District police officer helped plan a response.

When a Colorado man was arrested on terrorism charges, a Department of Homeland Security analyst probed whether he had Las Vegas ties.

Though the two cases are very different, the officials who worked them were in the same cubicle-filled room at the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas "fusion" center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs.

The fusion center concept, which was developed by the federal government after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is grounded in the idea that information flow between police agencies is the key to stopping terrorism.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, the concept has evolved to include a broader "all crimes, all hazards" approach.

A sign that federal law enforcement has embraced this strategy came last month when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Las Vegas and praised the local fusion center as a national model.

The maturation of the facility coincides with Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons' decision last month to fold the state's Office of Homeland Security into the Nevada Division of Emergency Management.

The fusion center appears poised to fill any void left by the merger, which left Nevada without a homeland security director reporting directly to the governor.

Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, whose Las Vegas police department runs the fusion center, said it has enhanced all aspects of local policing. He points to a meeting earlier this year with Henderson and North Las Vegas police.

Gillespie said the executive staffs of the three departments discussed information-sharing and long-term planning.

"From a day-to-day crime fighting standpoint, we're able to exchange and get out data among all law enforcement in the valley at a faster pace," Gillespie said. "We've also got connectivity to information generated by DHS and the FBI, which makes us more proactive in identifying threats."

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada lawyer Allen Lichtenstein calls mixing anti-terrorism with regular crime fighting problematic.

"They say they need extraordinary measures because of terrorism, but as soon as they get them, they apply it to ordinary situations," he said. "I think it weakens their argument that they needed extraordinary measures for terrorism."

Since 2004, the federal Department of Homeland Security has granted hundreds of millions of dollars to open and operate fusion centers across the nation.

Nevada received about $15 million, and now operates three of the nation's 72 centers. A facility in Reno examines threats and crime trends in northern Nevada. A center in Carson City focuses on rural parts of the state.

The Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center, a two-story leased complex near McCarran International Airport, is by far the largest and most elaborate of Nevada's intelligence sharing centers.

Officials say it's also the only one in the nation with a school district police officer on site. The Clark County School District is the fifth-largest in the nation, with more than 309,000 students at 352 campuses. Gillespie said he asked for school district involvement after a shooting death near Palo Verde High School last year. He credits the officer's presence with preventing violence at other campuses.

On an average day, more than 20 Las Vegas police officers work alongside agents from the FBI and the Homeland Security Department, and with officials from a dozen other agencies.

Steven Martinez, head of the FBI Las Vegas office since 2006, said Las Vegas police have the most officers at the center.

"But the way it's structured allows us to leverage each other's knowledge and experience," he said.

Some federal agents have complained Las Vegas police have been slow to share valuable information.

Lt. Kevin McMahill, police counterterrorism officer, acknowledged that information exchange hasn't been seamless. He blamed computer software problems and "institutional issues that have taken us a while to get around."

"There was information we weren't used to sharing with each other," he said.

Enhanced information sharing raises concerns about privacy for some civil libertarians.

The Las Vegas fusion center has a retired FBI agent monitoring compliance with federal guidelines for gathering and storing information. Any agency that receives federal funding to gather intelligence is subject to the same rules.

The guidelines prohibit law enforcement from collecting or keeping intelligence about "political, religious, or social views, associations, or activities" of people or groups unless the information directly relates to criminal conduct or activity.

These issues become more touchy now that fusion centers have adopted the National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. The initiative involves training officers to detect suspicious behavior, and if necessary, to log incidents.

Again, the ACLU's Lichtenstein has concerns.

"The problem is we're not discussing what constitutes suspicious activity. They say people will be trained on what suspicious activity is, but without clear limits, you just have people spying on each other and putting information into a database," he said.

Long before the fusion center opened its doors, Las Vegas boasted homeland security capabilities more extensive than most cities. Many officers from the police counterterrorism section now work at the fusion center, including nine on an all-hazard unit that averages one hazardous material call a day.

In addition, the Las Vegas department is one of few in the country with representatives who can see classified information from both the Homeland Security Department's National Operations Center and the National Counterterrorism Center.

Despite the technology and information available at the center, sometimes the best way to sniff out a threat is by hitting the streets.

That's what agents did following the arrest in Colorado of Najibullah Zazi, who is accused of plotting to detonate a bomb in New York City. The indictment against Zazi alleges he bought large quantities of beauty supply products containing hydrogen peroxide and acetone to make bombs.

"We visited every beauty supply shop and storage facility in southern Nevada and told them what to be on the look out for," McMahill said.

While monitoring events locally, fusion center officials also travel to other parts of the country and world to learn about anti-terrorism strategies.

Two detectives recently went to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh to observe crowd-control measures.

In December, several Las Vegas police officers plan to travel to Mumbai to talk with Indian authorities about a 2008 attack on hotels.

"If you look at attacks in the rest of the world, you know hotels are an attractive target for our enemies," the FBI's Martinez said.

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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com