Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Participation in Panel Discussions at the Universit

[The Patriot]

Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Participation in Panel Discussions at the University of Maryland and George Washington University

10-11-2011 04:00 AM

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

WASHINGTON—Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today traveled to College Park, Md., to join Governor Martin O’Malley at the University of Maryland in a panel discussion on homeland security enterprise in a post 9/11 world. Secretary Napolitano then returned to Washington, D.C., for an event with former Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff on the future of homeland security, hosted by the Homeland Security & Defense Business Council and The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute.

“DHS and its many partners have built a homeland security enterprise to better mitigate and defend against evolving threats, and to better respond and recover when a crisis happens,” said Secretary Napolitano. “Security is a shared responsibility, and by working with partners across the country, and increasingly with partners around the world, we will continue to build a strong foundation for a secure and resilient homeland.”

During her remarks, Secretary Napolitano underscored the Department’s efforts to get resources and information out of Washington, D.C., and into the hands of state and local law enforcement to provide them with the tools to identify and combat threats in their communities.

Today, there are 72 recognized state and major-urban-area fusion centers throughout the country, which interact regularly with FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) that coordinate resources and expertise from across the federal government to investigate terrorism cases.

Over the past year, DHS has collaborated closely with federal, state, local and private sector partners, to expand the “If You See Something, Say Something™” campaign, In addition, the administration has expanded the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative—an effort to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to terrorism, crime and other threats; standardize how those observations are documented and analyzed; and ensure the sharing of those reports with the JTTFs for further investigation. As part of this initiative, DHS and the Department of Justice have trained over 165,000 frontline officers to better identify terrorism-related suspicious activity.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov.

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