California’s Orange County is holding a domestic terrorism training course on Tuesday.
The course “[p]rovides an overview of domestic terrorism threats to the U.S. Homeland. TII [Terrorism: II] concentrates on domestic terrorism threats emanating from U.S. Domestic Violent Extremists who are motivated by a range of domestic extremist ideologies,” a flyer says. “This course uses case studies, multi-media, interactive class activities, and facilitated classroom discussion to review current trends, tactics and targets and provides public safety personnel with indicators for threat mitigation.”
Topics to be covered in the course include “racially motivated violent extremism / white supremacy extremism,” “sovereign citizen extremism,” “abortion-related extremism,” misinformation & radicalization trends,” and “involuntary celibate extremism,” among others.
The Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center (OCIAC) is a recognized fusion center location. Fusion centers are “state-owned and operated centers that serve as focal points in states and major urban areas for the receipt, analysis, gathering and sharing of threat-related information between State, Local, Tribal and Territorial (SLTT), federal and private sector partners,” according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) page.
Fusion centers provide information on terrorist risk assessments, disseminate alerts regarding threats, analyze information such as Suspicious Activity Reports, interpret intelligence information for stakeholders, and protect the civil liberties of Americans, according to the OCIAC website.
“Anti-terrorism is the OCIAC’s primary focus, though it will devote resources to crime analysis on a case-by-case basis,” the site adds.
A 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism document lists domestic terrorists as being “motivated to violence by single–issue ideologies related to abortion–, animal rights–, environmental–, or involuntary celibate–violent extremism, as well as other grievances – or a combination of ideological influences.”