Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract.

Headlines of the sniper attacks were relentless for almost an entire month. During 22 days in October 2002, the snipers' killing spree injured three and killed ten people. The media converged on the story at a non-stop pace, and the public understandably was entitled to be alarmed. High-profile cases such as the sniper attacks draw a large amount of attention and, therefore, can become cases through which professionals and scholars alike can learn. The sniper incident is one such case that provides exceptional research possibilities. The style and unique dialogue used in news conferences grabbed the attention of the media, the public, and the criminal community. How did law enforcement use public relations to help in its case? What crisis plan did Montgomery County, Maryland, the lead investigating department, implement? The goal of this research was to examine the crisis management plan of law enforcement when tragic situations such as the sniper attacks occur, and further to investigate agenda-setting within law enforcement's media services departments. This research was conducted as a case study, using interviews with public information officers of law enforcement agencies and numerous media reports including newspapers, news magazines, and television news. Results from this case study revealed that communicating accurate information to both the media and the community in a crisis was a top priority. Additionally, it was shared that the public information officer's role is to be ready and on the scene of crises in order to disseminate precise information. In the sniper attack incident, law enforcement controlled the flow of information and, therefore, set the agenda for the media. Moreover, the Chief of Police, when he realized the enormity of the case, took on the role of spokesperson, because he did not want the PIO to bear the burden of responsibility.

Wireless sensors can be worn on soldiers or installed on vehicles to form distributed sensor networks to locate the source of sniper fire. A two-step source localization process is proposed for this sniper detection task. The time difference of arrival (TDOA) for the acoustic signals received by the sensors is first estimated using the generalized cross correlation (GCC) method. The estimated TDOA values are then used by the hybrid spherical interpolation/maximum likelihood (SI/ML) estimation method to estimate the shooter location. A simulation model has been developed in MATLAB to study the performance of the hybrid SI/ML estimation method. A wireless sensor network is simulated in NS-2 to study the network throughput, delay and jitter. Simulation results indicate that the estimation accuracy can be increased by increasing the number of sensors or the inter-sensor spacing. The constraint of small inter-sensor spacing on wearable sensors is found to degrade the estimation accuracy, but vehicular configuration providing larger inter-sensor spacing can help improve the estimation accuracy. The sensor topology should be well represented in all three dimensions to obtain desired estimation accuracy. The estimation accuracy is not adversely affected by sensor node failures or location perturbations. The NS-2 simulation results indicate that the wireless sensor network has low delay and can support fast information exchange needed in counter-sniper applications.