On-Site Training

The SLATT Program’s primary objective is the delivery of specialized terrorism orientation, interdiction, investigation, and prevention training to state, local, and tribal law enforcement executives, command personnel, patrol officers, intelligence officers, investigators, analytical personnel, and prosecutors. Each course is specifically designed to meet the needs of the target audience. SLATT workshops are delivered in close coordination with the United States Attorneys’ Offices, Regional Information Sharing Systems® (RISS) Intelligence Centers, fusion centers, and Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF).

SLATT partners with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies across the country to deliver training. If you are interested in hosting training, please contact the SLATT Program for more information.

Training Formats

• Investigative/Intelligence Workshop—A 2½-day course for law enforcement investigators, intelligence officers, and analytical personnel that includes topics inherent in the investigation and prosecution of terrorism and criminal extremism.
  • Advanced Investigative/Intelligence Workshop: A one- or two-day workshop that provides instruction concentrated on a specific topic to meet an operational need of the requesting agency.
• Specialized Training Event—These workshops are designed to provide an effective, flexible response to state, local, and tribal law enforcement training needs. Training events are available as stand-alone events or as part of a larger conference and may range from two hours to two days in duration. Program content is tailored to accommodate the varied needs of specialized units. Available workshop formats include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Anti-Terrorism Workshop for Campus Law Enforcement—A one- or two-day workshop designed to provide terrorism awareness training to campus law enforcement personnel. Course topics are tailored to the specific concerns of college and university campuses and could include terrorism indicators, domestic and international terrorist/extremist groups, violent radicalization, and officer safety issues.
  • Executive Briefing—A one-day briefing designed to provide chiefs, sheriffs, and other executive-level law enforcement officials with current information regarding the global terrorist threat. Information sharing and terrorist indicators are emphasized in this course. This briefing is designed to be conducted in conjunction with the local FBI office.
  • Criminal Elements of the Sovereign Citizen Movement Workshop—A one-day workshop designed to provide law enforcement officers with current information regarding criminal elements of the sovereign citizen movement as well as intelligence implications associated with this movement. The basic beliefs of sovereign citizens, along with their historical antecedents, are discussed, and the threats that sovereign citizens present to law enforcement officers are explored. Extensive coverage is afforded to indicators to better enable law enforcement to recognize criminal sovereign citizens and to determine the level of threat. Emphasis is given to the problems that sovereign citizens present in court and other legal situations. The financial frauds employed by sovereign citizens are also discussed.
  • Tribal Lands Anti-Terrorism Briefing—A customized briefing for tribal law enforcement officers that addresses anti-terrorism training needs and issues specific to Indian country. Briefings are tailored to meet the needs of specific tribal areas and cover topics such as intelligence, indicators and warning signs, and other issues requested by the hosts.
• Train-the-Trainer Workshop—A course designed for qualified law enforcement trainers, intended to assist agencies in developing in-house anti-terrorism training capabilities by providing quality instruction, takeaway resources, and access to a dedicated Web site to obtain current information to keep their presentations updated.

Training Topics

Background Ideologies and Motivations

• Domestic Terrorism—This course explains the motivations of violent criminal extremists who are driven by events occurring in the United States. These individuals and groups have no foreign direction or guidance. The discussion will include criminal threats from militias, sovereign citizens, and white supremacists as well as single-issue terrorism. It examines investigative, response, and officer safety strategies for agency use in identifying and managing domestic criminal extremist cases.
• International Terrorism in the Post-9/11 World—The issue of international terrorism in the United States is intertwined with a case study about a once “normal” American youth who was radicalized and became a leader of a significant international terrorist organization.
• Paths to Violent Criminal Extremism—The process of moving from normal behavior to terrorism can be called radicalization, and it takes place in many ways. This briefing explains why radicalization occurs and explores recent cases. The purpose is to learn how to identify possible sources of radicalization and behavioral characteristics that indicate its presence in individuals.
• Special-Interest/Anarchist Groups—This course explores the development of animal rights and ecological terrorism and the impact of the criminal anarchist movement. It also provides detailed information on the realities of ecoterrorism from a law enforcement perspective.
• Terrorism Overview—This course briefly introduces and defines the subject of terrorism. It explores the current terrorist threat in the United States and highlights unique aspects of “terrorist” criminals as opposed to the offenders that law enforcement routinely encounters.

Cultural Awareness

• Arabic Culture and Islam for Law Enforcement—This course covers the five pillars of Islam, Islamic holidays, Islamic religious customs, and significant Islamic names. It explains how to use knowledge of Arabic culture and customs in conducting an interview. Muslim/Arabic name analysis (understanding the structure of names, including nicknames and titles) is emphasized. Recognizing and understanding Middle-Eastern clothing is covered.

Intelligence/Information Sharing

• 10 Critical Factors to Know About Law Enforcement Intelligence (LEI)—This course is an overview of the contemporary law enforcement intelligence process as per the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. The session includes an explanation of terms and concepts, provides examples of resources, and discusses the development of the intelligence capacity in an agency. It also gives an explanation of intelligence file guidelines and liability issues and provides access to intelligence products.
• Intelligence-Led Policing—The evolution of today’s criminal and terrorist threats requires law enforcement organizations to utilize intelligence practices to anticipate, prevent, and interdict criminal and terrorist activities. Intelligence-led policing, a police management philosophy, offers law enforcement organizations a platform for focusing limited police resources against problem areas, recidivist offenders, and suspicious behavior. Participants gain a greater understanding of how they can utilize the practice of intelligence-led policing in their local domains, while leveraging national-level initiatives designed to assist them.
• Violent Criminal Extremism in the Prison System—This presentation explores how law enforcement agencies can incorporate the intelligence potential from correctional departments into criminal cases, including those that involve terrorism. Topics include the intelligence potential of correctional departments, laws governing agency information sharing, potential sources of inmate intelligence, and possible sources of intelligence within the inmate population that correlate to criminal activities in the community.

Interviewing and Understanding Violent Criminal Extremists

• Conducting the Interview and Interrogation—This course provides fundamental topics and discussions essential in preparing for high-impact subject interviews in which a confession is crucial. The instructor also presents the theory of interrogation and defines several methods of conducting interrogations that have led to positive outcomes. The course is geared toward all law enforcement practitioners whose duties include interviewing and interrogation.
• Intermediate Interviewing Techniques—This course includes rapport building, testing for rapport, a variety of interviewing tools to assist interviewers in uncovering the truth, and techniques to break the interview impasse. Verbal and nonverbal methods to detect deception are discussed, with emphasis on Psychological Narrative Analysis, which is the study of word choices, grammar structures, and the attendant behavioral characteristics of the people who make those choices. The analysis helps to determine social status, personal relationships, and veracity.
• The Psychopathology of Hate Groups—This course presents the basic human behaviors, a knowledge of which is needed to successfully conduct a wide variety of interviews, including the violent criminal extremist. It also provides verbal and nonverbal tools for investigators to use to overcome resistance during an interview and to detect deception. Also discussed are ways to overcome the interview impasse.

Investigative Resources and Case Studies

• Case Study: Chechnya—Beslan School—This case study provides background on the issues the Russian government has dealt with in Chechnya since at least 1990. It contains an analysis of the Beslan School attacks on September 1–3, 2004, including lessons learned and their applicability to U.S. law enforcement.
• Case Study: Lockerbie—This case study of the December 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is delivered by the FBI official in charge of the American task force for the duration of the investigation. The presentation analyzes the investigation and discusses the lessons learned during the process that are of benefit to law enforcement officials worldwide in investigating major cases, including terrorism cases.
• Investigating Illegitimate Financial Tactics—This presentation covers the criminal financial aspects of the sovereign citizen movement as well as the history of the tax protester movement and its false beliefs. This session uses an actual covert and subsequent overt sovereign citizen criminal investigation in which the instructor was personally sued for $1.1 million. It ends with what a law enforcement officer needs to do when he or she is the object of financial terrorism from a sovereign citizen target.
• Preventing Soft-Target Terrorist Attacks—This block of instruction is designed to acquaint officers with the concept of soft targets by examining what happened during the attacks on hotels, restaurants, and other soft targets in Mumbai, India, and, more recently, the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.  The purpose is to gain knowledge of precursor behaviors and indicators of potential soft-target attacks.  Also discussed is what law enforcement can do to assist soft targets in their communities to preclude acts of violence and terrorism.
• Preventing Terrorism Through Impostor Detection and Fraudulent ID Training—This course provides a familiarization with identity theft as it relates to criminal and terrorist acts, with an understanding of how criminals and terrorists use fraudulent identification. It presents a description and demonstration of security features used on driver’s licenses, U.S. passports and Permanent Resident Cards, and other federal documents. It provides information regarding the detection of impostors by utilizing facial recognition techniques.
• Social Media and Terrorism—This overview provides a comprehensive look at social media and its nexus to terrorism—with an emphasis on the associated practices, risk mitigation policies, and potential pitfalls.  This presentation defines “social media” and demonstrates how terrorists use social media and how law enforcement can utilize it to enhance counterterrorism investigations.  Several case studies are used to show how terrorists exploit social media, how to recognize these techniques, and appropriate ways for the U.S. Intelligence Enterprise (law enforcement and the Intelligence Community) to investigate and respond.

Terrorism Financing

• Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing—This overview discusses money laundering and its inverse partner, terrorist finance. It discusses common methodologies and provides law enforcement professionals with ideas, tools, and resources on how to “follow the money.”
• Terrorism Financing—This presentation examines law enforcement methodology for obtaining information from the banking industry, conducting a financial criminal investigation, and preparing a source and application of funds to use for forfeiture warrants and search warrants. This presentation also includes an overview of Iraq’s financial infrastructure and what law enforcement can learn from Iraq’s tactics to conceal bank accounts intended for illegal activities.

Terrorism Indicators and Officer Safety

• Explosives, Methods, and Attacks—This presentation offers a unique look at peripheral information associated with explosives materials and chemicals and their relationship to terrorist activity. It stresses why the seemingly least important bit of information should be forwarded to JTTFs or fusion centers. The types of explosives and their ease of manufacturing and delivery are also discussed. The course presents simple but critically important strategies to implement in order to detect and identify future violators, which may prevent a terrorist act involving explosives. The presentation is NOT the usual bomb squad “look but don’t touch” class as there are many actual items to see and touch. Videos and slides illustrate terrorist activity and some of the fusing/firing mechanism components that may be found during routine police work. There is a short focus on recognizing suicide bombers and/or being able to identify their modus operandi to avert a horrific act of violence. Videos and slides depicting actual terrorist activity eliminated or identified by the military will be discussed. The final Officer Safety phase explains that recognizing an attack in progress and taking immediate effective action can avert mass killing.
• Recognizing Terrorist Indicators and Warning Signs—This overview provides a comprehensive look at warnings and indicators, with an emphasis on integrating terrorism intelligence into traditional criminal investigations. It explores how to identify early warning signs often exhibited by criminal extremist groups and individuals Several case studies are used to demonstrate the precursor activities that, if recognized and reported, could have prevented the terrorist attack.
• Understanding the Sovereign Citizen Movement—This course provides a thorough review of a sovereign citizen encounter in West Memphis, Arkansas, on May 20, 2010. After the encounter, two officers were dead and two others were seriously wounded. Dash-cam video and surveillance video are used to demonstrate pre-incident indicators of sovereign citizen behaviors. The course emphasizes the importance of calling for backup and focuses on how to safely interact with sovereign citizens during traffic stops.

University and College Campus Training

• Domestic Terrorism for Campuses—This presentation defines domestic terrorism, explains the threat posed by domestic terrorists, and covers recent domestic terrorist arrests with an emphasis on the threat presented to educational campuses by domestic terrorists.
• International Violence on Campus—This overview provides a basic understanding of various cultures, religions, and politics as they relate to international terrorism. Emphasis is placed on issues and confrontations in other parts of the world that international students may bring onto a college campus.
• Radicalization on College Campuses—This presentation focuses on the process by which individuals become involved in radical movements. Included in the discussion are how and why radicalization occurs, the progressive stages of radicalization, and indicators associated with radicalization of students. Also discussed are campus public safety techniques for identification and prevention of radicalization on campus.