Family, friends of radicalized loath to report

They’re not aware there are other options than talking to the police

Radicalized individuals are not reported to authorities by friends and family members because they don’t know about available deradicalization resources, say counter-terrorism experts.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told a parliamentary committee recently that people close to Michael Zehaf-Bibeau ought to have reported his increasingly radicalized behaviour in the time leading up to the shooting of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and the attack on Parliament Hill on Oct. 22, 2014.

Part of the problem is that friends and family members of individuals who are radicalized believe their only resort is to report their loved one to the police, which might then lead to criminal charges, according to Lorne Dawson, a terrorist radicalization expert and professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo.

“They have conflicting loyalties. They don’t know where to report the individual except for the police, and they don’t want to be responsible for their loved one being arrested.”

As well, he says, family members might not take the threat seriously. “Maybe the person has a reputation for being over-the-top, or exaggerating things, or being rather extreme in their judgment and views on things.”

Calling the authorities is not ideal for a family that believes it might simply have an emotionally strung-out individual on their hands, he says.

Staff Sgt. David Zackrias heads the Diversity and Race Relations Section of the Ottawa Police Service, which aims to provide outreach and build bridges between police and diverse ethnic communities in Ottawa.

He’s also the vice co-chair on the policing side of the Community and Police Action Committee (COMPAC), a community-police advisory body in Ottawa that meets once a month.

Zackrias urges family and community members to report an individual who is seemingly in the early stages of radicalization so the person can get help before a violent threshold is crossed.

“If public safety is in jeopardy, we need to make sure the right people are notified,” he says.

“But if this is something that we could work with in terms of engagement, and there’s an issue with a certain person who is in the infancy stage of being radicalized, then we engage the community and address those issues and share what resources are out there in the community.”

Such community resources might include a psychiatrist or social worker with the skills to help the person address the issue.

Most of Zackrias’s work within the Muslim community involves taking part in panel discussions with imams and Muslim community leaders, in which their concerns and grievances are brought forward.

“When the community comes and informs us about certain things in terms of they’re concerned that certain people are coming to town and giving hate speech, we provide them with the information to make an informed decision,” he says.

Last year, Public Safety initiated a strategy for countering violent extremism with a major focus on engaging and interacting with communities and individuals to research the root causes of terrorism and how to combat them, according to the department’s website.

Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a nonpartisan international governance think-tank based in Waterloo, Ont., said one of the biggest challenges facing a CVE strategy is building trust between communities and law enforcement.

“The RCMP and different municipal police forces have worked with vulnerable communities and leaders,” she said. “They’ve reached out and some of these programs are really fantastic.”

As well, she said that having an open dialogue among family members about the risks of extremism is vital, because young people are adept at hiding their lives on the Internet from others, and many people might not believe that radicalization could happen in their own homes.

“Having parents and families involved is a really important tool for not only deradicalization but also in preventing wannabe foreign fighters. Like any social problem, dialogue, bringing it to the fore, and having a conversation can be helpful,” she said.