What should an engine company do when it responds to a call for chest pain and finds a 1,200-square-foot apartment inhabited by four adult males only one of whom speaks any English who have no furniture but do have high-end computers and expensive printers? Just as they do hundreds of times per day, the crew should stabilize, treat and transport the patient. As the crew heads back to the station, this is what the discussion sounds like:

“Did you guys see those computers and printers? Those looked really expensive, but there was nothing else in the place. What do you think they were up to?”

“Something wasn't right about the way they acted. Maybe we should tell someone.”

“Who? PD won't do anything.”

“Oh, well. What's for dinner?”

Firefighters are instinctual and often recognize when something isn't right, but without some basic awareness training, they likely are unable to verbalize these instincts. However, a program recently launched in Arizona could provide a solution.

The Arizona Terrorism Liaison Officers program features weekly briefings on the newest terrorism techniques, trends, tactics and procedures. The program is operated out of the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, or ACTIC, and includes participants from 21 law enforcement, four military, five federal and 13 fire service agencies throughout the state.

Participating firefighters and police officers all know each other by first name, share relevant information and ask questions from their perspectives. Everyone in the room currently has, or will receive, an FBI secret clearance and has been trained on handling and processing intelligence documents and information.

Arizona adopted the TLO concept from California and expanded its capability to include additional areas of operation. Quite often the program is described as “flying the plane as we build it,” and the program is receptive to all viable suggestions. The program currently includes more than 100 certified TLOs from around the state and recently received approval to add 70 more TLOs outside of the Phoenix area.

Mutual respect

Although firefighters and law enforcement personnel respect and admire the other, neither group can begin to fully comprehend the opposite's perspective and informational needs regarding terrorism prevention. It's neither expected nor realistic to believe that law enforcement officers will be able to share everything with the fire service involving terrorism planning and plots before, during or after an attack. However, the best option the fire service can take is to protect itself by actively engaging in anti-terrorism awareness and prevention efforts.

In June 2006 seven men were arrested for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and an FBI building in Florida. The “Miami Seven” are all American citizens; they obviously lived in someone's jurisdiction while they planned the operation. Could this very thing be happening in your community? Every devious plot must be hatched somewhere. Why not in your neighborhood?

Law enforcement officers have realized that firefighters can be additional eyes and ears; they are routinely invited into places where law enforcement would need a search warrant to enter. Firefighters in Arizona not only perform typical suppression, but also provide Advanced Life Support, full-service hazmat mitigation and technical-rescue response. There is not a single violent or hazmat event to which firefighters won't eventually respond, but firefighters have historically been left in the dark at these responses; they not only deserve access to relevant intelligence, they should demand it. Firefighters should be trained to clearly understand intelligence information and comprehend its impact. TLOs are that link to a proactive posture.

The TLO program has provided a mechanism that actively integrates the fire service into the intelligence community. Every TLO is required to pass an extensive background clearance check and attend a state certification course before being given access to the ACTIC, which houses professional intelligence analysts who gather, collect and analyze information from all sources, including the public. The intelligence analysts produce and disseminate official intelligence documents to agencies that have representation at the ACTIC and also give intelligence briefings at the weekly TLO meetings.

The Arizona TLO program currently encompasses three distinct but interrelated missions that each TLO is trained to perform:

1. Criminal intelligence collection and dissemination.

2. Building intelligence collection (threat and vulnerability assessments).

3. On-scene response to significant events.

In addition to an initial 40-hour TLO certification course, weekly training sessions and briefings continue to enhance this three-pronged attack.

Criminal intelligence

The Phoenix Fire Regional Dispatch Center in the Metro-Phoenix Automatic Aid System dispatches fire resources for 24 communities an average of 250,000 calls per year. These calls represent 250,000 opportunities to see something suspicious and to disrupt a potential domestic or international terrorist plot. Firefighters all should have some basic awareness training to supplement their instincts.

It isn't necessary for each firefighter to know or understand the complicated and sometimes convoluted layers of law enforcement to report a suspicious event. A single radio or phone call to a TLO provides critical information to the correct law enforcement agency while maintaining a definitive disconnect between the firefighters and the suspected activity.

Whenever legally possible, TLOs distribute important intelligence to the appropriate fire department personnel. One example is an FBI intelligence document that showed a Mag-Lite flashlight that had been converted to a handgun. This flashlight has the ability to fire either a .410-shotgun or .38-caliber round when the button is pressed. It's not hard to imagine a firefighter picking up one of these flashlights in the dark to help while another firefighter/paramedic starts an IV. These types of documents are created and distributed as Officer Safety Bulletins, which are classified “Law Enforcement Sensitive” but reclassified by the ACTIC as “Public Safety Sensitive” so it may be shared with all first responders.

Building intelligence

Firefighters are essential assets in collecting site information and provide a unique perspective because of their ability to preplan a building's destruction.

TLOs perform official, scheduled threat and vulnerability assessments of critical infrastructures and key assets statewide, including water treatment plants, electric generation plants and substations, critical government buildings, hazmat and military defense contractors and manufacturers, and any other facility that meets the program definition. In the United States, 85% of the critical infrastructure is privately owned, and these private owners have no responsibility to share their trade secrets or weaknesses with anyone, including the ACTIC. This is where TLOs are such a valuable asset. As sworn firefighters or law enforcement officers, each TLO is assigned a specific list of critical sites and becomes the point of contact to and from each site. The assigned TLO maintains ongoing dialogue with the site managing entity and develops a personal relationship built on trust.

The ACTIC has received excellent cooperation from private businesses in the building intelligence program because they were guaranteed proprietary anonymity of trade secrets. No private entity would allow the TLO program to collect this information if it wasn't legally and legislatively protected from public disclosure and Freedom of Information Act requests. This was accomplished by storing all information at the ACTIC under the authority of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Protected Critical Infrastructure Information Accreditation Program and under the protection of the local FBI field office, which is housed in the ACTIC. Dissemination of this information to every firefighter is neither practical nor legally possible, although each of the respective command staffs knows how to obtain information during an incident at locations that have participated in the program.

Additionally, the TLO program and ACTIC are partnered with DHS and the ArchAngel community infrastructure protection program in a secure information management program to store this information electronically. This proactive posture will make firefighters safer when they respond to any incident at critical infrastructure/key asset locations.

On-scene response

The third and most unique element of the Arizona TLO program is connectivity to the “boots on the ground” personnel. Collecting intelligence and then taking that intelligence back to the field-level firefighters is essential to close the loop from collection to dissemination.

Normally, when firefighters respond to a scene they are in a reactionary mode. The fire service can't afford to be only reactionary; it must be more proactive and prevent the incident as opposed to building up its capabilities to respond to an incident that has already occurred. The best way to accomplish prevention is prediction, and the only way to predict terrorism is through active involvement with the intelligence community.

Sending the best-equipped, best-trained, and most mentally and physically capable firefighters to every scene is every fire department's goal, but the best defense is a good offense. Prevention of terrorism is the only affordable option and firefighters must engage in anti-terrorism efforts to become proactive. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, FBI Agent Kenneth Williams drafted the now famous “Phoenix Memo,” which documented intelligence concerning suspicious activity occurring at Arizona flight schools, but this memo sat on the desk of a bureaucrat until after Sept. 11, 2001. Could the Phoenix Memo alone have prevented the attacks? Probably not, but it certainly was an important piece of intelligence that was almost worthless after the event. Essentially, this among other predictive intelligence puzzle pieces became missed opportunities to be proactive rather than reactive.

Because of the multidiscipline resources centralized at the ACTIC, TLOs responding to an incident command post can provide unified commanders from both law enforcement and fire with building intelligence; suspect photographs; criminal history, including data from 92 databases; GIS mapping products for evacuations; real-time threat analysis for a particular site or organization; and direct connection to nearly every local, county, state and federal agency necessary.

For example, on Feb. 23, 2006, a lone gunman took nine hostages inside the hearing room of a National Labor Relations Board courtroom located on the 18th floor of a Phoenix high rise for almost seven hours. TLOs immediately responded to the unified command post and shortly after arrival provided the Phoenix Police Department's SWAT team with color photographs of the hostage taker as the team made entry into the building to take over for the first on-scene patrol units. Later in the incident the TLOs distributed color photos of each of the hostages to the unified command, the SWAT operators on the 18th floor, and the Phoenix firefighters staged for firefighting and EMS treatment on the 16th floor. This incident was unique because historically fire resources will stage a few blocks away from the incident.

Due to initial quick response by local patrol units and active surveillance inside the hearing room, the suspect was surrounded and unable to escape or cause harm to anyone on adjacent floors. A Phoenix Fire Department TLO was forward-deployed to the 16th floor with an encrypted radio. This real-time intelligence connection allowed firefighters to safely stage two floors below for an exceptionally quick response if the scene turned bad for any reason. Additionally, through background research the ACTIC provided command a thorough history of the suspect's criminal history and mental health issues. After nearly seven hours of negotiations the suspect surrendered peacefully and was taken into custody without any injuries.

Guns & hoses

The Arizona TLO program is a simple matter of multidiscipline cooperation, not just in concept and theory, but also in actual everyday practice. We have melded guns and hoses at the ACTIC successfully for more than a year and plan to expand the program to every county in Arizona, including every Department of Public Safety district.

The fire service has the most to gain from this path of information and intelligence gathering and sharing. By engaging in the intelligence process, the fire service has accepted responsibility to protect ourselves, and the citizens to whom we provide services, by avoiding any potential gaps. Law enforcement agencies have their hands full doing their jobs. It isn't practical for the fire service to expect law enforcement to provide us with all the intelligence we need to stay safe. The fire service now has a mechanism to protect our personnel in their realm. The fire service must continue to change with the newest threats, and in Arizona, this is one way we have chosen to remain engaged.

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Rick Salyers has been a member of the Phoenix Fire Department since 1981. He currently serves as captain/paramedic assigned to the Phoenix Homeland Defense Bureau, serving as intelligence program manager. Salyers recently was appointed director of the Terrorism Liaison Officer program. He also served 33 years in both active duty and the reserves in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Troy Lutrick is a captain/paramedic on special assignment as a terrorism liaison officer for the Glendale (Ariz.) Fire Department. His 17-year career has largely focused on the special operations arena, including assignment as a hazmat and technical-rescue technician and a toxicology paramedic. Lutrick also has spent 10 years as an educator, both internally and at the community college level, and holds an associate's degree in fire science.