Exploring Extremist Threats to US Law Enforcement: An Analysis of Attack Dynamics and Mitigation Strategies

• In Event: Poster Session 1

Abstract

The principal porpose of this poster is to analyze the groups that attack US law enforcement officials. While doing that, this poster will delve into the significance of the threats that extremists such as jihadists, anarchists, Antifa, Sovereign Citizens, militias, hate groups, fringe organizations, and single-issue radicals represent to US law enforcement. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is used to highlight the scale of the threats. The GTD is an open-source database with around 210,000 cases. This research focuses on attacks on US law enforcement between 2019 and 2022. The poster displays the results of the following three hypothesis tests: First, the typology of threat groups significantly influences the frequency of attacks against US law enforcement targets. Second, the modus operandi employed by threat groups significantly influences the frequency of attacks against US law enforcement targets. Third, there is a significant relationship between the type of attack and the frequency of attacks against US law enforcement targets. The poster also presents the results of correlation analyses and significant tests conducted using SPSS version 29.

Authors

• Huseyin Cinoglu, Texas A&M International University

• Dean C. Alexander, Western Illinois University