To Protect and To Serve: Policing in an Age of Terrorism

Since 9/11, the threat of terrorism has become a key issue in police agencies throughout the world. How should the police change to counter terrorism threats? What implications do such changes have for traditional responsibilities of the police like combating crime, or in the resources or focus of modern police agencies? To Protect and To Serve: Policing in an Age of Terrorism brings together distinguished American and Israeli policing scholars, who pool their knowledge and experience to shed light on what has happened to policing since the turn of the century, and what trends can be expect over the next few decades.

To Protect and To Serve begins by asking what terrorism is and what forms it takes, and discusses how it raises new questions for democratic societies and democratic policing. While many scholars and lay people take for granted the fact that the police should play a central role in the fight against terrorism, the volume also examines critically the rationale for the police role. Accordingly a chapter also examines the role that the police should play in the complex task of preventing, and responding to terror, and responding to the outcomes of terror? Another chapter begins with a description of the specific strategies and tactics that police agencies have developed to deal with terrorism (and the outcomes of terrorism), and assesses what works both in preventing terrorism and in dealing with its consequences. A critical issue that has received comparatively little attention is addressed in another chapter, which examines how police agencies responded organizationally to the added responsibilities of fighting terrorism. Finally, the book also examines the impact of fighting terrorism on minority and majority communities, and the questions of legitimacy that are raised by new roles that police take on.

David Weisburd is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice and Director of the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and Distinguished Professor of Administration of Justice, and Director of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. He also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Police Foundation in Washington DC, and Chair of its Research Advisory Committee. Professor Weisburd is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (and the 2008 recipient of the AEC's Joan McCord Award for contributions to experimental criminology). He is a member of the National Research Council Committee on Crime Law and Justice and served on the NRC working group on Evaluating Anti-Crime Programs and its panel on Police Practices and Policies. He is also Co-Chair of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group, and a member of the Harvard University/National Institute of Justice Executive Session on Policing. Professor Weisburd is author or editor of seventeen books and more than eighty scientific articles, and is editor of the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

Thomas E. Feucht, PhD, is Executive Senior Science Advisor at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Feucht received his doctorate in sociology in 1986 from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with an emphasis on quantitative research methods and statistics. From 1987 to 1994, Dr. Feucht served on the faculty at Cleveland State University (CSU) in the Sociology Department and the College of Urban Affairs. Dr. Feucht joined NIJ in 1994. From 1996 until 1998, he served as Chief of the Crime Control and Prevention Division in NIJ’s Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE). In that position, Dr. Feucht managed NIJ’s research portfolios on law enforcement, crime prevention, and substance abuse. Hebecame ORE’s deputy director (1998) and later, director (2002). In 2005, Dr. Feucht was appointed to the federal government’s Senior Executive Service and became NIJ’s Deputy Director for research and evaluation. Dr. Feucht serves on the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Science, of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Feucht served as chief of staff to the Attorney General’s Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force, established as part of the 1996 Methamphetamine Control Act. He has conducted and published research in the areas of substance abuse, intravenous drug use and HIV, prostitution, prison drug use, and school violence.