At 3 a.m. Jan. 8, San Joaquin Valley beef rancher John Harris woke up to find 14 tractor-trailer rigs in flames in his ranch yard, where the trucks had been parked. Someone had cut through the fence and planted incendiary devices under the cab of each truck. 

“It was a senseless thing to do — there could have been someone sleeping in the cab,” Harris said. The Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the arson, which is being investigated by the FBI.

This week, Harris spoke by videotape to a seminar on "Best Practices and Domestic Terrorism," held at the UC Davis Conference Center, and organized by the campus Police Department and the FBI’s Sacramento office.

Police Chief Matt Carmichael said: "We're here to provide a safe and secure environment for everybody on campus, and sharing knowledge and best practices with other agencies, and with others who are threatened by extremist groups, helps us reach that goal.”

Local, state and federal law enforcement officers attended the May 8 seminar, along with university researchers, corporate security directors, business leaders, and representatives from utilities and public agencies.

The participants heard about threats from domestic extremist groups and vulnerabilities in vital infrastructure, business and research facilities. They heard case studies — such as the Harris Ranch arson — and discussed how to prevent, investigate and prosecute such crimes.

"Law enforcement and security are topics of passionate debate at the University of California," Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter said in his opening remarks. "Today's seminar is an important contribution to that dialog and improving the functioning of law enforcement on campus."

Familiar threat to Vet Med

The Harris Ranch arson was "a wake-up call for American agriculture," said Harris Ranch representative Mike Smith. The top five agricultural counties in the United States are in California — and four of them are in the Central Valley, he noted.

But such crimes are all too familiar to academic researchers who work with animals. Michael Lairmore, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, noted his school’s emphasis on One Health — whereby Vet Med works with other disciplines on problems that affect both human and animal health, and the environment.

Some groups are opposed to animal research under any circumstances.

Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are interested primarily in attracting public attention, said Lairmore, a veterinarian and cancer researcher. At the extreme, he said, the Animal Liberation Front is a leaderless international group with the declared goals of inflicting economic damage, and "liberating" animals from farms and research facilities.

Lairmore gave a case study from his former campus, Ohio State University. In 2002, a veterinary neurologist there was studying dementia in cats with the feline form of AIDS. He hoped to understand why some AIDS patients developed dementia more rapidly — and how it might be prevented or treated.

PETA put out an "Action Alert" on the neurologist’s research. He received a number of death threats, including a photo of a bombed car with the words "You're next." His car was broken into, and university buildings were spray-painted.

Ohio State was slow to respond, Lairmore said.

By the time the university’s incoming president made a strong statement in support of research, the researcher had shut down his lab and gone into private practice, Lairmore recalled.

"We cannot be silent, we have to be proactive," said Lairmore, who joined UC Davis in 2011. "At UC Davis, we try to be proactive in countering these threats, and I look forward to working with you all."

1987 attack at UC Davis

UC Davis was the site of the Animal Liberation Front’s first attack in the United States, in April 1987, when arson struck a veterinary diagnostic laboratory, recalled Special Agent Ted Halla of the FBI’s Seattle office. The crime has not been solved.

On the other hand, Halla said, Operation Backfire took down an Earth Liberation Front cell known as The Family. According to the FBI, the group carried out 46 attacks in the Pacific Northwest from 1996 to 2001, causing at least $48 million of damage.

In May 2001, The Family carried out simultaneous arson attacks on the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture near Seattle and the Jefferson Poplar Tree Farm in northern Oregon. The attacks damaged buildings and vehicles, and destroyed research data and manuscripts.

The operation was carefully planned and organized, with the target sites scouted up to a year in advance, Halla said. The group built sophisticated incendiary devices equipped with timers, rocket motors and road flares.

Police and the FBI organized a multiagency task force in the late 1990s, and the first arrests came in 2005. Ultimately, 18 people were indicted; three remain fugitives, probably overseas.

Power and water utilities are also vulnerable to attack. Greg Hoglund, chief executive officer of Sacramento-based software security firm HBGary, described how hackers could take control of computerized controls that manage pipelines, water towers and the power grid.

From agriculture to power lines, water projects to research labs, the infrastructure that supports everyday life has major vulnerabilities.

"Our infrastructure was not created with the belief that we would have to protect it from our own people or someone coming from overseas to take it out," said Special Agent Brian Buckley of the FBI’s Sacramento office.

"We have to be in front of the threat," Buckley said.