So this week our placement has been at MIPT (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism). As the name suggests, this place is a facility dedicated to preventing terrorism, through increasing the efficiency of intelligence gathering at a grass roots level.
We were given a tour of the facilities, small compared to those which we'd been used to at the OSBI headquarters. With only 9 members of staff, we had effectively added half their workforce into their office space, luckily, there is room enough for us all.
So to start off with, we had an introductory talk from the Director of MIPT, about the state of the world and giving a brief introduction to how the entire US system of Law Enforcement works. It's a damn sight more complicated than the UK's, I can tell you that much already! If things weren't so complicated within the US, the 9/11 attacks may well have been able to have been stopped, as it seems that each department had gleaned enough intelligence to be able to piece together a possible attack, with multiple suspects. However, Federal Law, prohibited (until the Patriot Act) this information to be shared across organisation.
Anyways back on topic.
After the talk we broke for lunch, having been given money to go and buy our own. Being adventurous, we settled for the Deli across the road from the MIPT headquarters, it was Okay I guess, the food wasn't bad, but at the same time it wouldn't win any Michelin stars (mainly because the portion sizes were bigger than half a mouthful!). But at the end of the day, food is food and it was edible.
Having literally just exited the Deli, we were stood on the pavement waiting for Jack to come out from the bathroom, when our attentions were turned to a US Park Ranger coming towards us telling us that we weren't allowed to loiter on the pavements outside the MIPT. Any of us there at the time will testify that we completely bricked it, stammering our apologies and saying that we'd move once our friend was out of the Deli. Only then was it that a cheekey grin and a laugh from the ranger, who then took his sunglasses off, revealed him to be Mike Washington, the Dean's husband. The look of relief on all of our faces was immense as we realised that we'd just been made to look completely and utterly stupid!
Mike then gave us a really quick tour around the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, which was located literally 30 metres away from our building, telling us of the significance of the 'chairs' and the exact position where Timothy McVeigh parked the truck and left it to explode. A real poignant moment, when one considers that just over 15 years ago, there was a building stood there, unaware of what was going to happen to it.
With our lunch break over, we went back for our final talk of the day, from the Deputy Director of MIPT, who told us what the mission of MIPT. It was a rather hurried talk as she had an important call that could've come at any time whilst she was talking to us, but nonetheless it was a highly informative talk.
This left us with around 2 1/2 hours to kill before we were to be picked up. So rather kindly, the MIPT paid for our admission into the Memorial Museum. Words cannot actually describe the emotions that ran through me whilst going around the museum. It starts off with a timeline of the day of the attack in the first room of exhibits, finishing up at 9am, just 2 minutes before the attack took place. What came next will live with me forever. We were taken into a room, where a recording was played to everyone inside it. The only recording of the explosion itself, recorded in a building close by to the scene of the bombing. It was horrible, sat there listening to it knowing what was about to happen. Luckily those in the recordings survived. Unfortunatley they were some of the lucky ones, with 168 people perishing. I don't really want to say much more about the museum as I believe it has to be experienced rather than described, but I shall include some news footage of the aftermath of the bombings.
The Museum was a deeply moving experience, on which I hope everyone gets the opportunity to live, as it shows the hurt that many people went through as well as how the Law Enforcement Agencies worked to apprehend McVeigh.
Back at University we had just about enough time to change before heading out for dinner to a BBQ All You Can Eat place. I was stuffed after 2 decent sized plates, with everyone else eating more or less the same. Once again, I was subjected to just how amazing US Ribs are compared to UK ribs, as the meat just fell off of the bone!!! I did take my camera to this, and it made the rounds around the table a few times, with people taking random pictures, some which were awesome, and some which weren't quite so good. I'll put my two favourites up anyways:
That's a pretty epic amount of food if you ask me!
Having got back from the BBQ place, we all changed and went to play the sport of the trip. Yep yet more volleyball. I'm getting pretty good now, all I need to do is learn how to jump properly and I'll be able to spike the ball.
This was the first time that us Brits had played with any American's, as we found ourselves mixing up and playing 3 games with a bunch of Americans who lived locally. It was pretty awesome fun, which I'd love to do again. The Americans were really pretty good at Volleyball, and put us to shame with their plays, however, they did lose to us (although I was playing on the US team to even out numbers). For the first time too, We managed to get some pretty decent pictures, despite the mosquitos coming out in force and trying to reduce us to a pile of bones!
Now onto Tuesday, and Day two at MIPT. This would see the start of our research project that we will be undertaking throughout our internship. The research will see us examine the question "Compare and Contrast differences in UK and US policing systems, pretty awesome. Especially given the amount of resources available. The MIPT library has a huge amount of books on the subjects of Terrorism and Law Enforcement, so much that I didn't really know where to start, and in all honesty, still don't. I could either start off in the 1960s where there was a terrorist attack in the US, 1970s to talk about Northern Ireland or 1995 to start with the Oklahoma bombings. I'll come to that hurdle at some point next week.
They basically left us to our own devices in the morning, planning our paper. So us being students, the majority of our time was spent on facebook and msn talking to people back in the UK. Having said that, a fair amount of work was done (or made look like was done by surrounding myself in a pile of books!)
After lunch at another deli, World War Three nearly broke out between the group, with certain members antagonising others, in a vicious circle. Although it was rather funny to watch at the time, tempers were incredibly on edge whilst we made our way back for a presentation from the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force). This was a really interesting, talking about things ranging from how terrorists operate, through to how organisations are now collaborating together to take down the bad guys. Again, all three of the guys doing the presentation were carrying pistols, it made me think of the questions from Hot Fuzz where Nick Frost asks Simon Pegg: "Have you ever shot a gun whilst diving through the air? Have you ever shot a gun from a car in a high speed pursuit?", which would've been amazingly funny to ask. Maybe the next guy will get them, although he's something like the old Director of the CIA, so he might not find it too funny. But it's worth a try at the end of the day!
With the presentation over we clocked off for the day after another half hour or so of work done. The evening was pretty uneventful really, watched Shutter Island. Apparently its meant to be this thriller, in all fairness, I was bored and thought it was shit. The scariest bit was when there was a flashback to Belsen with the hundreds of bodies lying around. Not nice.
So now onto today.
And England FINALLY have something to cheer about. Final Group Game of the World Cup, England needed to win in order to go through. If I'm honest, after the first two performances, I wasn't holding out much hope. But damn right, England being England, we do it. Ok so we won 1-0, and lost first place in the group to the Yanks, but we're through and that's all that matters.
Hell, us guys were excited, getting to watch the game and all, and we left for where we were doing our placement, some 2 hours away, with several St George Flags adorning the bus.
As we drove off, I could hear in my head this song, as we were pretty raucous and celebrating victory.
Thankfully this didn't happen:
Anyways, after a 2 hour drive we arrived at some police academy training place whose name escapes me as it's another abbreviation, where we were to sit in on a MIPT training session on Information Collection on Patrol. It was pretty interesting, talking about the 8 signs of terrorism, with warnings being given about making assumptions before taking in the entire picture.
We then had another presentation to sit through, and just our luck, it's the exact same one as we'd had at the OSBI last Wednesday, on the Fusion Centre, however this one didn't seem to go on for half as long, despite being the exact same presentation.
On the way home we stopped for lunch, at 4pm. Yes, it was late but who cares. First American Subway, it was lovely. However, having not drunk enough during the day I felt incredibly sick on the bus back, but survived it in one piece, so all is good. Moral of the story is to not drink.
Having eaten dinner (just an hour after lunch), we all congregated in the commons clubhouse for Isaacs birthday, having bought him a card, cake and signed volleyball.
That there's the whole of our group, bar Eliot with Isaac, 2-r next to Kristina. He's awesome. Happy Birthday Isaac!!!!With the group then dissipated, we noticed on the TV that a storm was coming our way. So 5 of us decided to go and watch it, not realising that the further we got to it, the faster it was coming towards us. Having said that, we were there for around 2 hours I think. Of the 200+ pictures I took, I think about 4 made the final cut. Here're my faves:
They don't look quite as Impressive down small, but they are pretty good in my opinion, especially the one of the fork!!!
So that's been the last 3 days really, I think the title sums it up. Memorials, Motivation and Mission Accomplished
Memorials: MIPT, OKC Bombing Memorial
Motivation: Motivation to work and produce an awesome research paper & also to take some awesome pics
Mission Accomplished: England got through, and I got some amazing picss!!!!
Love to you all
xx
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