Police Chiefs Warned of Crimes of the Future

An FBI forecasting specialist warned California police chiefs Thursday that their near future holds:

-A campaign by white-supremacist terrorists to be hired as police officers. “What better haven for a racist than behind a badge?”

-Major riots and civil disorders that will dwarf the violence of the 1960s.

-A tremendous surge in computer-related crime by a new class of criminal “wearing $500 suits.”

William L. Tafoya, an instructor and researcher at the FBI’s national academy in Virginia, told members of the California Police Chiefs Assn. gathered this week at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel that his forecasts are the consensus of 15 top U.S. law enforcement experts.

Referring to a closed-door talk by FBI terrorism experts earlier Thursday, Tafoya said the threat of terrorism in the United States “is greater from within than from other countries.” He said that by 1995, American white supremacists will have increased their terrorist acts by 50% over 1984 and will be the greatest threat by far.

“They are going to try, if they haven’t already, to get into police departments” where they would gain “the legitimate authority to use deadly weapons,” Tafoya said.

In appraising prospective officers, “how do you test whether an individual is a racist or not? How do you assess that? I think you need to give it some thought,” Tafoya said.

“I’m suggesting this is a real serious problem. They’re out there. The white supremacist movement is not over. It’s not dead. We’re going to see them come back, and I just hope you don’t have them in your department.”

Tafoya said the prediction of widespread rioting in 1999 “has potentially the most significant negative impact for this nation. . . . We’re going to see civil unrest in this nation as we saw 2 decades ago, but it will eclipse in magnitude, intensity and violence what we saw before.”

He said steps taken now may derail this trend toward civil unrest. He said police are on the threshold of receiving a new mandate from the public to toughen law enforcement, “but the way in which law enforcement does that may determine whether we push over the edge toward the urban unrest that is expected.”

Old-style, heavy-handed police tactics will only make more people see police as the bad guys, he said. “Many already feel alienated,” he said.

Tafoya said that now, in even the smallest communities, most children have “at least some computer experience.” The demand for computer experts will lead them into the field, where, he said, some will turn their talents to computer crime.

“The kind of crook your officers are going to be chasing very soon are wearing $500 suits with a gold Rolex carrying a Gucci attache, and inside the attache is going to be a laptop computer,” he said. These criminals will be in addition to, not instead of, the ones carrying guns, he said.

“Who’s going to investigate these crimes?” Tafoya asked. The need for officers tough enough “to play linebacker” will soon be outstripped by the need for officers with math and computer skills, he said. Tafoya said the future is, however, not entirely bleak.

He said as much as half the law enforcement work now done by police eventually will be by private security forces, perhaps freeing police officers for what they consider “real police work.”

And in about 60 years, major police departments will become so sophisticated that they will no longer need to turn to universities to conduct significant research. College degrees will be required not only for promotion, but for entry into law enforcement work, and the public will respond by regarding law enforcement as a profession.

And, he said, the nation’s police still look to California as the leader in the field, “as they have for the last 2 decades. They need your leadership now more than they have at any time during the last half century.”