Terrorism Prevention Through Community Policing

Mass casualty, premeditated, and targeted violence incidents connected with extremism and hate are on the rise in the United States. The year 2019 saw more mass killings in the United States than ever recorded in one calendar year. Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) is the government-funded program that intended to mitigate these threats, but diverse community groups labeled CVE a discriminatory spying campaign, focused exclusively on Muslim community members. This thesis explores whether CVE might benefit from the integration of community policing strategies and, if so, what strategies from community policing would make future CVE programs more successful. Using an appreciative inquiry approach, this thesis evaluates CVE pilot programs, including current community policing models in Los Angeles and New York City. Recommendations include abandoning the phrase “countering violent extremism”; creating an all-inclusive, whole-community approach; empowering all front-line police officers to be problem solvers; cultivating citizen involvement in the design and structure of violence prevention programs; educating police officers on hate crimes, violent extremism, and the radicalization process; separating all community-focused violence programming from intelligence collection and criminal investigation teams; and gaining endorsements of such programs from executive-level law enforcement managers.