Responding to Terrorist Attacks: Coordination Barriers Encountered by Law Enforcement Agencies

• In Event: Using Data and Coordinated Responses to Improve Policing

Abstract

Coordination is one of the vital issues that each public service organization needs to take into account for better services. It becomes more than a necessity, when coordination is needed before, during and after disasters happen. While responding a terrorist attack, for example, an effective coordination can mitigate the destructive impact of that man-made disaster and then can accelerate moving on to the recovery phase in short time. On the other hand, an uncoordinated response can make the situation worse and leave irrelievable physical and psychological wounds in the community. There are many barriers make the interagency coordination difficult or even an impossible task. In this study, we will try to discover most common barriers that impair the inter-organizational coordination efforts. After a brief background, we will tabulate the coordination barriers derived from several studies. Then, we will analyze a number of cases in order to better understand the barriers to law enforcement agencies.

Authors

• Mehmet Fatih Bastug, University of Cincinnati

• Seref Goksel Onder, University of Cincinnati