WASHINGTON  State and local police officers fail to notify federal authorities about encounters with possible terror suspects up to 10 times a day, a senior FBI official said. The rate of failure represents missed opportunities to verify possible matches to suspects on the government's terrorist watch list or to remove individuals from the list whose names had been added by mistake, Leonard Boyle, director of the bureau's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), said in an interview. Police are asked to contact the center when routine computerized background checks on individuals — who may have violated traffic rules or been involved in a domestic disturbance — trigger electronic alerts from the TSC. The alerts indicate possible matches to individuals on the government's watch list of an estimated 400,000 people. Police notifications to the center result in the identification of 40 to 50 verified suspects each day. Of those, Boyle said, a handful result in arrests. Regular audits of the system reveal that officers do not respond to the alerts 8 to 10 times daily. Federal authorities are not automatically contacted. As a result, Boyle said, they are forced to reconstruct the encounters through interviews and local police reports. The government does not track the rate at which valid watch-list suspects are identified when the initial contacts go unreported, but Boyle said it is fairly common for the unreported encounters to result later in positive identifications of watch-list suspects. There is no evidence that a local reporting failure resulted in a terrorist act in the USA. The watch list, however, was used to deny U.S. entry to Egyptian Omar Ahmed Ali, who in 2005 committed a suicide bombing in Qatar, killing one and injuring 12 others, said screening center spokesman Chad Kolton. The screening center was created in 2003 to fill domestic security gaps exposed by 9/11. Two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, were sought by federal investigators for more than a year before the attacks. Both went undetected, even though Oklahoma authorities had stopped Alhazmi and cited him for speeding five months before the attacks in 2001. Boyle said a basic "unfamiliarity with the notification system and an unfamiliarity with the benefits of reporting" the contacts have been the most common explanations for not acting on the alerts. "I would like to think that (compliance) would be higher," said Ronald Ruecker, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the nation's largest organization of law enforcement officials. Ruecker, public safety director in Sherwood, Ore., said the lack of reporting could be due to the "cultural shift" in law enforcement's post-Sept. 11 emphasis on fighting terrorism. He said that focus hasn't completely resonated in police agencies. "It is a culture not easily changed," Ruecker said. Darrel Stephens, former president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said the compliance rate suggests that some officers intentionally choose not to contact federal authorities. Others may not respond because of workload pressures and the time required to contact the center, he said. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more