Homegrown Terrorists Pose Unique Challenge To Homeland Security Officials
TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Recent events have illustrated the challenges that law enforcement across the country faces when trying to detect homegrown terrorism.
Omar Mateen, the shooter in Orlando, pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call from the gay nightclub where he killed at least 49 people.
"This was an act of violence born out of hate that inflicted terror on an entire community. I would call it a hate crime, terrorism. It's both," the FBI's Ron Hopper said.
But how do law enforcement officials determine that someone is a terrorist or just a hateful person?
"It's accessed by the behavior under the actions that the person takes. People have the right to say the things they say under the first amendment, but when they take action in the form of violence it changes the game," Steven Gutkin, Deputy Director, NJ Homeland Security said.
As CBS2's Meg Baker explained, some question if identifying with a terror group is window dressing, or used as an excuse to kill.
"This was clearly an attack on our gay community, an attack on our Hispanic community. It was an attack on Orlando. It was a terror attack on our nation," Florida Governor Rick Scott said.
Gutkin said researching someone's background and activities can better determine the motive.
"We would classify it from our perspective as the person being a homegrown extremist - which means it is an individual that lives here in the United States, that's inspired by some sort of foreign terrorist organization's ideology and in turn acts out in belief that he or she believes that ideology," Gutkin said.
He called it a leaderless movement.
"They are seeing things online for example that may be connecting with other folks in encrypted chat rooms and then being inspired based on their belief of this ideology," Gutkin said.
The FBI had previously interviewed Mateen about his suspected link to terrorism, but let him go.
Security officials said domestic terrorism poses as great of a threat as ISIS. In 2015 there were 61 arrests of homegrown extremists in the country including 11 in New York and 5 in New Jersey.
NJ Homeland Security has resources for the public on their website. As the saying goes, if you see something say something, and you can do that anonymously on an app on your phone.
A primary resource for Homeland Security is the public stepping up to report something suspicious.