‘Outside agitators’ expected in North Carolina to protest pipeline

State law enforcement officials told legislators Thursday that they're expecting "outside agitators" to come to North Carolina in the coming months to protest the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

The comments came during a presentation about the N.C. Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which is part of the State Bureau of Investigation. The center coordinates communication between federal, state and local agencies to evaluate public safety threats and solve crimes.

Dirk German, an SBI special agent-in-charge who oversees the center, compared potential protests of the proposed natural gas pipeline along Interstate 95 to protests of a similar pipeline in North Dakota.

"A lot of the protesters that are going to be coming in for that are going to be professional protesters that are not from North Carolina," he told a legislative oversight committee.

The Information Sharing and Analysis Center has assisted local law enforcement in handling recent protests, including Chapel Hill protests calling for the Silent Sam statue to be removed. Melissa Roberts said her job at the center involves searching through social media posts to identify protesters and learn of their plans. "As all of the individuals starting showing up, I was able to identify a known individual who was a key instigator," she said, adding that when officers arrested the man, the action served to "draw the crowd away from the statue and de-escalated that entire situation."

The center is one of 79 similar centers across the country set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Its mission has grown since. "In 2010, we realized there's a whole lot more information out there than terrorism information," German said, adding that the center now covers all types of crimes. "We're the people that will look at the small stuff so the big stuff doesn't happen."

But Sen. Ronald Rabin, a Harnett County Republican, said he's concerned the center isn't focusing enough on raising awareness in the community about terrorism threats. "Awareness of terrorism in the community is weak," Rabin said. "They have to know locally what the threat is."

This story was originally published November 17, 2017 at 12:32 PM with the headline "‘Outside agitators’ expected in North Carolina to protest pipeline."