BY MICHAEL HILL, The Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York state has changed the book on public safety training since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
State police and prison guards are both being taught to spot telltale signs of potential terrorist activity -- things like suspicious behavior or forged identity documents. The new training standards are part of a larger refocusing of state government to prevent another attack like the one that destroyed the World Trade Center.
“In a nutshell, our recruits and our incumbents are learning what is international terrorism, where it is based, why does it exist, what its goals are,” said state police Col. Bart Johnson.
Recruits at the state police academy are now taught about terrorism alongside subjects like narcotics and domestic disturbances. Current troopers get similar anti-terrorism training as part of what Johnson called “a whole new learning process.”
While reluctant to reveal particulars because of security concerns, Johnson said subject areas include things like recognizing forged identification or booby-trapped cars as well as understanding what to look for in crowds.
“Indicators and warnings would include a person milling in a crowd, dressed inappropriately, with bulky clothing. That would certainly warrant an inquiry,” Johnson said. "... That guy could have a bomb strapped to him.”
Training does not single out terrorists by race or ethnicity, Johnson said, but covers any sort of people who would employ terror.
Those efforts are in addition to systematic training of local police, a group Pataki administration security adviser James Kallstrom has called “our eyes and ears.”
The second prong of training covers how to react to a terrorist attack. Troopers are now issued gas masks and there is a new emergency response team trained to respond to chemical, biological or nuclear attacks.
The new emphasis is not just for officers on the street. State corrections officials have added a four-hour “threat awareness training session” that is being taught in-house to new hires and current employees, according to Department of Correctional Services spokesman James Flateau.
The instruction includes a primer on the structure, operations and goals of terrorist organizations. Flateau said he could not divulge details about what employees are trained to look for, but said part of the curriculum deals with proper ways to monitor inmates.
Instructors give the example of El Sayyid Nosair, a former Attica state prison inmate linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Flateau said the example shows that terrorism training is not just some esoteric exercise for prison employees.
“We’ve had experience where somebody who was connected to a terrorist attack was in fact an inmate,” Flateau said.
The new training comes as state government budgeted $180 million for its Office of Public Security, added security staff and beefed up it public safety bureaucracy. State police have put 120 more troopers on the U.S.-Canadian border and brought roughly 100 retirees back into service.
There is a state Office of Public Safety and a new Upstate New York Regional Intelligence Center, which is a sort of hub for analysis of crime-fighting data. The center also informs police agencies around the state if they are conducting similar investigations. Johnson said the Albany-area intelligence center -- he would not provide a more specific location -- is staffed around the clock.
“It looks at those types of crimes that are normally associated with the support of terrorism: money laundering, cigarette smuggling, identity theft, narcotics and those types of crimes,” Johnson said.