Fusion Centres
A fusion centre is a point that shares information with the relevant forces regarding terrorism acts. It serves as a medium controls the flow of information between different forces and collects it together to enable critical analysis of the information. Fusion centres were created in the jointly under the US Department of Homeland Security and the office of Justice Programs in the Department of Justice. The main aim of creating fusion centres was due to the difficulty that was encountered in collecting information for analysis (Sloan 115). It took too long to collect information and analyse it then come up with the results from the analysis. Time is a crucial factor in fighting terrorism since a small miscalculation could cost a government millions of lives. This is among the many reasons as to why the US government created fusion centres.
Fusion centres are emergency centres where there are people responding to enquiries and questions from agents and investigators. The centres run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ensure that the public’s safety. The centre acts as a watch centre that analyses information and identifies anomalies that could be linked with terrorism then notifies the relevant forces to check it out. The fusion centre is a collection of agents from different agencies or law enforcement areas from different locations. The agents meet in the fusion centre where they all work together. Each one of them contacts his home agency and collects all information needed then delivers it at the fusion centre. The centre then analyses the information received from different areas and gives the result to the agents in the fusion centre (Dyson 92). The agents then contact their home agencies again and inform them on the results found at the fusion centre. The agencies then disseminate the information accordingly. For exhaustive collection of information, the fusion centre collects information from both the public and private sectors.
The main aim of the fusion centre is to predict any threats and notify the relevant forces to stop them before they happen. For this reason, most fusion centres are located near or inside law enforcement forces such as the police. This allows for faster dissemination of information since the relevant law enforcement agencies are next to the fusion centres. Fusion centres also operate hotlines that are toll free to give the public a chance to reach them and inform them in case of an alarm. Some fusion centres collect their information from other government sectors such as fire fighters. Fusion centres were first created in 2003 since the government had noticed inefficiency in the collection of relevant information needed to fight terrorism. The homeland security would know of something that maybe the intelligence agencies did not yet the intelligence agency had something that could help. These two law enforcement agencies know something that is a threat to the public safety but are not sure of where it leads them (Law 20). If the two agencies could share what they have, they would stand a better chance of fighting terrorism than when they are separate. That is the whole idea behind fusion agencies.
Despite the creation of fusion centres coming with great advantages, there have been critics who claim that the centres are inefficient (Townshend 59). Due to this, the government has deployed resources to the centres to enable them to do their work more efficiently and effectively. The government has also worked to ensure that there are more fusion centres in the United States. This move is taken to ensure that there is maximum protection for the citizens and the country in general, just to make sure that the fusion centres achieve their objective.
