CHICAGO (WLS) — As the world waits to see if a volatile ceasefire between Iran and Israel will hold, former federal and local law enforcement and private security experts say police are on high alert conducting 24/7 threat assessments.
In Chicago on any given day, busy trains, packed buses and city sidewalks are all under constant surveillance.
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And as Americans rally en masse against action in the Middle East, its homeland protection that has police on edge.
“Just because there is a ceasefire does not mean that there will not be soft targets throughout the United States, and I think law enforcement and the public needs to be very vigilant over the next date several days and weeks,” said ABC7 Law Enforcement Expert Derek Mayer, a former high-ranking official with the U.S. Secret Service Chicago Field Office.
Outdoor, large scale summer events in Chicago including concerts, street festivals, and the upcoming Pride Parade are events are seen as prime targets by police.
ABC7’s Police Affairs Consultant Bill Kushner, a former lieutenant with CPD said, “You can’t go into parts of millennial park without going through metal detectors, without being searched, that doesn’t stop vehicle borne devices or a large vehicle ramming through a crowd of people.”
Chicago police told the I-Team in part on Monday, “While there is no actionable intelligence in Chicago at this time, we are closely communicating with our federal and state partners.”
That includes the Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center or STIC, where the I-Team has had rare access to see the 24/7 threat assessment center in action.
“So, there are fusion centers or intelligence centers in every major Police Department in every state, and there’s a great intelligence sharing network that goes on,” explained Kushner.
Mayer also stressed that there is monitoring on levels the public may be unaware of.
“Law enforcement and their intelligence divisions are monitoring social media. They’re monitoring email chatter. They’re trying to find out if there are any bad actors out there.”
ABC News has learned the FBI is now re-allocating potentially thousands of agents away from immigration enforcement work to focus on these kinds of cyberthreats.
Just last week cell phone video captured FBI agents assisting with an immigration operation in Elgin.
Now, agents will try and zero in on the sector that plagues law enforcement around the clock
“I think the biggest concern for myself and for every law enforcement professional in the country are lone wolf terrorists. There’s no doubt there’s sleeper cells within the United States. We’d like to think that the feds have a pretty good handle on where most of them are. It may not be actionable intelligence, but they have a pretty good idea where everybody’s at it’s the lone wolf terrorist, the individual who’s radicalized and he has decided to take action and his radical beliefs, those are the ones that are underneath everybody’s radar,” said Kushner.
The Department of Homeland Security released a bulletin over the weekend warning of foreign terror organizations calling for violence against US assets and people in the Middle East.
But law enforcement said that it could be entirely separate from individuals inspired to commit politically motivated violence on a much smaller scale like many of the attacks we’ve seen recently.
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