Associate Director of Special Programs

southers@usc.edu
(213) 740-3861

Erroll G. Southers is a former FBI Special Agent, whose homeland security and public safety career spans three decades. Serving in executive positions in university, homeland security and public safety organizations at every level of government, he possesses a unique academic and operational methodology to counterterrorism. This innovative approach has resulted in several premier "translational research" programs, most notably ARMOR (Assistant Randomized Motoring Over Routes), designed to detect and deter terrorist pre-attack operations.

Mr. Southers is the Associate Director of Special Programs for CREATE, where he developed the university's Executive Program in Counter-Terrorism and serves as an Adjunct Professor of Homeland Security and Public Policy in the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development. Recognized as one of the university's counter-terrorism experts, he lectures at the Joint Chiefs of Staff Level IV Antiterrorism Seminars and has testified before the full Congressional Committee on Homeland Security.

He is the Chief of Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism for the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) Police Department, the nation's largest aviation law enforcement agency. His interdisciplinary methodology has engaged CREATE and LAWA in pilot projects involving the testing of Peroxide-Based Explosives Detection Methodologies and randomized counter-terrorism deployment. He began his law enforcement career at the Santa Monica Police Department and served as a faculty member of the Rio Hondo Police Academy. During his tenure in the FBI, Special Agent Southers was assigned to matters of counter-terrorism, foreign counterintelligence and was a member of the Bureau's SWAT Team.

Mr. Southers is the former Deputy Director for Critical Infrastructure Protection of the California Office of Homeland Security, appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger. He provided oversight of critical infrastructure protection policy, national pilot programs such as PCII (Protected Critical Infrastructure Information) and served as a member of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) Working Group, responsible for developing the NIPP.

His international experience includes counterterrorism study and lectures in Canada, Great Britain, Israel and China, where he was invited to assess the proposed terrorism countermeasures for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Mr. Southers earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Brown University and his Master of Public Administration at USC, where his doctoral study focuses on "Social Network Analysis: Predictive Indicators of Homegrown Islamic Terror Cells". He is a Senior Fellow of the UCLA School of Public Affairs.