The Internet has been embraced worldwide because of its widespread availability and cost-effectiveness. As access to the Internet continues to spread and the use of social media proliferates, people are spending more time online, connecting with one another and creating virtual communities. Individuals and organizations are launching websites, and posting and consuming content from a wide array of sources, and joining multiple social media platforms, such as chat rooms and message boards, online dating sites, and online gaming.

Although individuals and organizations worldwide use Twitter for a variety of legitimate reasons, violent extremists, gangs, and terrorist groups use it to connect with their supports.

Although individuals and organizations worldwide use YouTube for a variety of legitimate reasons, violent extremists, gangs, and terrorist groups take advantage of its opportunities to broadcast their own ideologies

This guide offers recommendations for local outreach campaigns, explains how to effectively develop and disseminate messages in order to help the public better understand their role in reporting suspicious activity, and helps law enforcement agencies and community partners to understand, navigate, and use the many resources available to help build and sustain local efforts. New technologies, resources, and innovative practices highlighted within this document can be used to improve the education, communication, and trust amongst communities and law enforcement agencies who serve them. With the proper tools and knowledge, individuals and entire communities will help law enforcement agencies identify, investigate, and prevent crime and terrorism.

The Project Safe Neighborhoods Initiative in partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) developed a mobile application as a proactive gun violence prevention strategy and tool. The ATF Police Officer's Guide to Recovered Firearms mobile application is designed to assist law enforcement in firearm identification, trace, recovery and safety. Utilizing the app, law enforcement officials will receive strategies to enhance firearm safety, a visual guide for accuracy in firearm identification and a collection of tips, policies and procedures to assist in firearms investigations. The ATF Firearms app is a helpful resource as investigative priorities focus on targeting armed violent offenders and career criminals, narcotics traffickers, narco-terrorists, violent gangs, and domestic and international arms traffickers.

Thank you for visiting the ATF Police Officer's Guide to Recovered Firearms Application. The mobile application is designed to assist law enforcement in firearm identification, trace, recovery and safety. The mobile application is now available on both the IOS App Store and the Google Play Store under the title "ATF Firearms." For quicker access to the ATF Firearms mobile application, please scan the QR code provided below. 

Contact Information:
For more information on the IACP PSN Initiative, email [email protected].
To request DOJ BJA Project Safe Neighborhoods training or technical assistance, click here.  

The Building Communities of Trust (BCOT) Initiative focuses on developing trust between law enforcement, fusion centers, and the communities they serve, particularly immigrant and minority communities, so that crime and terrorism can be addressed. This initiative has been administered primarily by the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI), a program that provides law enforcement with a capacity for gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, and sharing suspicious activity reports about behaviors that have a potential nexus to terrorism. The NSI recognizes that each community has one of the most important roles in the prevention of crime and terrorism, since law enforcement agencies are dependent on community members to report suspicious activity information to state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) law enforcement officers. To help ensure that this reporting takes place, it is essential that law enforcement and community members have strong, trusting relationships. As these relationships are developed and maintained, members of the community are more likely to report crime and suspicious activities, which is why the NSI has worked with partners at the federal, state, and local levels—including U.S. Attorney’s Offices, privacy advocacy groups, faith leaders, and a diverse group of local community members—to implement the Building Communities of Trust initiative.

Preventing terrorism is a responsibility of every American, and requires an alert and informed citizenry that is ready to report suspicious activity that may be indicative of a terrorist act or terrorism planning. With this core understanding, IACP began reviewing contemporary and historical research, literature, trends, and practices related to community-based terrorism prevention efforts in the spring of 2010. The goal of this effort was to identify successful strategies for implementing and maintaining state, territorial, tribal, and local initiatives that improve the public’s awareness and reporting of suspicious activity related to terrorism. Initial findings suggested that more information was needed to understand the psychological and social inhibitors and motivators of the public’s awareness of and willingness to report suspicious activity. To narrow this gap in data, the project team conducted and analyzed research in the summer of 2010.

Radicalization to violence is the process by which individuals are introduced to an overtly ideological message and belief system that encourages movement from moderate, mainstream beliefs towards extreme views. Radicalization can occur due to a multitude of factors and influences and is not limited to any single ethnic, cultural, religious or political group. Radical thinking only becomes a threat to national security, when it leads an individual to espouse or engage in violence as a means of achieving political, ideological or religious goals.

Foreign fighters are individuals who are recruited to travel to a conflict zone or who choose to do so on their own in order to train and/or fight with a particular group. The motivation for this travel may be political, ideological or religious. Travelling abroad to take part in a conflict for such motivations is not a new phenomenon. However, this trend has become an increasing concern in the last decade as individuals from Europe and North America have sought to train and fight with Al Qaeda and its affiliates in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

At first glance, some individual violent extremists may appear to have planned and executed an operation with complete autonomy. Consequently, these individuals are often labeled lone terrorists or “lone wolves”. However, many individuals who have been placed into this threat category have demonstrated some degree of affiliation with others who espouse the same or similar violent extremist ideologies.