Patrick Birch, Fort Riley Anti-Terrorism Officer, was a guest on the Tuesday morning show ‘JC Now’ on 1420 AM – The Talk of JC.

Birch said that the US Army designated August as Anti-Terrorism Awareness month, and explained the goals of bringing awareness in the month of August.

“We’re trying to increase the community’s knowledge about how to report suspicious activity, the importance of maintaining vigilance when you’re at home or traveling and basically throughout your day to day activities; it’s all about trying to help us prevent any type of act of terrorism,” said Birch.

Birch said that if you see activity that isn’t consistent with what you’d normally see in that area, then you should report that to authorities – no matter how insignificant it may seem.

“One of the examples I use is, say if you’re out in a public space and you see people walk in to a food court area and they don’t get anything to eat, they don’t get anything to drink, they just kind of sit off by themselves and are not really engaged with what you would normally expect to see going on in that area – that’s something we’d want to see,” said Birch. “The other things we like to have folks pay attention to is how technology may be used; for example, everybody has a camera on their phone, so if you’re sitting down as you’re eating your face may down looking at your camera, or phone…so if that camera is tilted upward and that person has not been engaged in activity, they might actually be taking photographs or video of what might be going on in that area because they intend to target that area.”

The important thing, according to Birch, is to be aware of your surroundings and if you happen to “spot an odd” moment or activity to report it.

Birch said that when they receive information on suspicious activity, they sometimes work with state and federal agencies to ensure the public’s safety.

“We can take a look at it, and if it’s something that belongs or we need to share with them, we can do that and that helps increase that security bubble,” said Birch.

Fort Riley has an iWATCH system that falls along the lines of the Department of Security’s ‘See Something, Say Something’ Campaign which acts as a neighborhood watch where people can feel safe reporting suspicious activity.

More information on that system can be accessed here.

Birch says that reporting anything that seems out of the ordinary is essential to staying safe; “Most people think these things are very insignificant when they could be very significant.”