The Effect of TERRORISM Risk Perception and Agency’s Interaction on Police Homeland Security Preparedness

Since 9/11, terrorism has been widely recognized as a significant political and social problem, with countries all over the world increasing their counterterrorism efforts. In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2002 to consolidate 22 federal agencies into one massive department focused on keeping the country safe, largely through antiterrorism and counterterrorism efforts. DHS also coordinates ef-forts on the state, county, and local levels to enhance police terrorism preparedness, since local law enforcement will likely be first responders in the event of a terrorist attack. In fact, in 2016, DHS allocated $1.6 billion in grant funding to prepare state and local law enforcement to prevent and respond to such attacks as part of their “Na-tional Preparedness and Resilience” priorities. Most of the local agencies in this initiative are smaller law enforcement agencies with 1-25 full-time employ-ees. What is the level of terrorism preparedness of these small agencies and what factors influence that level of preparedness? Recent research has explored terrorism’s etiology and law enforcement’s preparedness on its risk. Some argue that police risk perceptions or police interactions with a larger agency influence the level of homeland security preparedness. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the determinants of police homeland security preparedness. The present study will empirically analyze the effect of police terrorism risk perceptions and police interactions on the level of police homeland security preparedness. Contingency theory is used as an explanatory framework to understand risk perception, organizational be-havior, and preparedness. To address gaps in the literature regarding homeland security policing, the present study simultaneously tests hypotheses derived from contingency theory, namely, whether police terrorism risk perceptions effectively influence the level of police homeland security preparedness and whether police agency’s interactions with a larger agency effectively influence the level of police homeland security preparedness. This study uses data from a national survey of 350 small municipal law enforcement agencies from March 2011 to June 2011 in the United States. A multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that police terrorism risk perceptions and frequent interactions with a larger agency are positively associated with the level of home-land security preparedness in small law enforcement agencies in the United States. In other words, the primary findings from this study indicate that police agencies with higher levels of perceived terrorism risk and interac-tions with a larger agency are more likely to enhance their preparedness for future terrorism and cyber terrorism incidents. The contributions, limitations and suggestions for the future study were discussed in discussions and conclusion.