Customer Reviews

Terrorism and Organized Hate Crime: Intelligence Gathering, Analysis and Investigations, Second Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Captain Ronczkowski brings new meaning to reading with this book. I am a student in his Terrorism class and this book has depicted and described what Terrorism really is. Before taking his class and reading his book my views and understanding of Terrorism was limited. Thanks to his dedication as a Law Enforcement Officer, Teacher and Author this book will open the eyes of those who read it. Thanks Captain!!

"I have witnessed an emphasis on agencies hiring, training, and even certifying analytical personnel to address homeland security, terrorism, and organized hate crime. The problem has been the lack of materials applicable to law enforcement. That was until Mr. Ronczkowski penned this book. I congratulate him."

Eduardo Gonzalez (Commission Secretary for CALEA and Director United States Marshal's Service 1993-1999)

I'd rather give this book 2.5 stars, but I don't have that option. I started off with three, but as I started to write out my criticism, I realized that three stars would be too generous.

While I appreciate what the author is trying to do with this book, this may be a case of trying to cover too much ground in a condensed work. The author provides an introduction to terrorist groups, various analytic methods, and touches on gangs and religiously-motivated extremism. Unfortunately, the broad brush approach isn't properly focuses. The author makes generalizations that can be misleading while skipping over more important information.

I've been searching for other honest reviews of this book and find it hard to believe that everyone truly rates this as five stars. Perhaps I'm not reading this book correctly, but there were many times where it seems the author contradicts himself within the same paragraph. I noticed that there is not an editor listed for this book and I believe that this may in fact be the main issue I have with the book... someone should be pushing to reorganize all of the information laid out and ask the author to clarify his points.

Terrorism and Organized Hate Crime: Intelligence Gathering, Analysis and Investigations, Second Edition This book is awesome!!! Mike Ronczkowski knows his stuff. A great read for all.

"I think its a great piece of work, very timely, relevant, and, at least in my opinion, touches on everything that matters to both the analyst and law enforcement officer, particularly those in the "intel" business."

The author puts together a good work with relatively well gathered sources. However, with the changing scene of global political affairs, international terrorism and organized hate crime should be divided into 2 topics of discussion when writting about domestic security and the methods used to gather intelligence and conduct investigations. The ability to gather intelligence, and analyze critical events becomes a little more difficult when agencies lack people with adequate language skills. The intent along with patience and sophistication make foreign terrorists a much bigger security threat than organized hate crime groups. However certain sections of his text provide a great outlook at what the future holds, such as cyberterrorism and bioterrorism and the challenges facing US law enforcement. The text also does not offer enough information about the origins of certain terrorist movements, which might deplete his thesis about how US law enforcement should approach issues of national security. This lack of political history of nations and peoples is probably due to the author's lack of experience in either federal law enforcement or any contact with personnel from the state department or any intelligence agency. As an example how much can the author expand on middle east terrorism and Al-Queda or Hamas without ever even mentioning the ideoligies of Sayyad Qutb? Overall, the text is good but my suggestion is that when writting about the issues the author discusses, a differentiation must be made between the spread of mid east and southeast terrorists and domestic based "american" groups. The challenges are different, primarily due to language and thus the methods of gathering intel and analyzing it will differ somewhat. Furthermore the lack of explanation at ideologies does not enable the reader to perhaps encounter a counterideology... and see the true face of what terrorists intend to do with the United States and to that we should refer at least slightly to the teachings of Sayyad Qubt.