I suppose I'm meant to be disturbed by this apparent militarization of federal agencies, but I doubt NASA SWAT account for much if any of the civil rights abuses going on in America right now. Rather, most of that stuff is doubtlessly coming from the usual suspects (local cops, FBI, ATF, ICE, etc), not the oddball outfits.
Maybe instead I'm supposed to think these organizations are wasting taxpayer money on matters that are outside their wheelhouse.. maybe that's the case. I can see why NASA would need a security team but perhaps that could be more efficiently provided by another agency. The article doesn't really seem to make this argument though.
I suppose maybe I'm just being a grump and the article is meant for general edification with no agenda.
I think it speaks mostly to the general trend of police militarization, which is both enabled and normalized to the extent that basically every law enforcement agency is expected to have a tactical unit, even if it's a relatively obscure and small agency.
Of course this mostly stands out in the federal government, which is almost certainly wasting money by maintaining so many separate law enforcement agencies, especially when a certain degree of standardization is in place in that most federal law enforcement officers (but not all) train at FLETC. This makes you question whey there are a million separate agencies instead of one large one.
And for the most part the answer isn't really a good one... just an agglomeration of history, with the most significant part being a result of the Inspectors General Act which basically created the situation that every executive branch agency has its own internal law enforcement organization.
For example, given that the Federal Protective Service exists, one wonders about the necessity of so many executive branch agencies having their own law enforcement unit to protect their facilities. But then one wonders why the Federal Protective Service exists when there is some historical justification for assigning that duty to the Secret Service. And so on.
Look at it this way: a similar controversy has existed at a local level over university and school district police departments acquiring ex-military equipment and establishing tactical units. Once again it's probably a lower risk than the municipal police department, but it does say something about the state of militarization. And then one can wonder why it is typical in many areas for universities and school districts to have their own police departments, which often face funding, training, and retention challenges compared to the municipal departments... Around here the university police departments have a reputation as a mill that pays for people to attend the academy, after which they spend their mandatory six months and then immediately transfer to a municipal agency with better pay. As you can imagine this does wonders for the quality of the workforce in the university departments.
More broadly, this whole thing also touches on the uneven training and staffing standards for US law enforcement agencies, which seems to result in good part from both the sheer number of such agencies and the various peculiarity of the state laws under which they obtain their authority (e.g. consider states that do and do not commission security police). This should be less of a problem with federal agencies due to the de facto standards established by FLETC, but we've seen in e.g. Portland that the inconsistent policies of federal agencies with regard to oversight, use of force, etc. can very much be wielded against the citizenry.
> I think it speaks mostly to the general trend of police militarization, which is both enabled and normalized to the extent that basically every law enforcement agency is expected to have a tactical unit, even if it's a relatively obscure and small agency.
In some ways have these types of teams/units could be useful, as it could allow more 'aggressive' tactics to be standard operating procedure (SOP) for only certain officers allowing others to be trained for other things.
Perhaps putting all the "warriors" into special units that are only deployed in certain circumstances could allow for the beat cops to have different mentality:
> This makes you question whey there are a million separate agencies instead of one large one.
Of the agencies the article mentioned, each of them did seem to have their own mission and set of security issues to address. Why would it be necessary to shift management of that to a seperate organisation? Standization is obviously very virtuous, but it’s usually at odds with specialization which seems like it would be required in some of these situations.
Anybody who’s worked in a large organisation knows the pain of one size fits all solutions handed down from executive management. It’s the same in the government, only orders of magnitude worse. For instance the army is obsessed with standization in its procurement pipelines. Any time it buys anything it wants to buy one thing that works for absolutely everybody (this is honestly their most important concern when it comes to procurement), and all of the people that end up using that equipment hate it. You always end up with a one size fits nobody solution.
The argument against "police militarization" flew right out of the window over the past 3 months. Same with the argument against the 2nd amendment. People are buying so many guns, the background check system is overloaded and gun stores are sold out.
I am generally for the non-militarization of local policing, and was inclined in that direction for federal policing as well, but this article and your mention of the FLETC (which I had never heard of) made me realize that perhaps it makes sense, even the multiplication of agency teams.
Here's my reasoning: at the Federal level, the US is large country (4th geographically and 3rd by population) and the federal agencies cover lots of different areas. Yes, you need different people with different skills to protect a spaceport, a train, a nuke on a truck, etc. OK but what about Amtrack what's so special about trains? Well, the article had the example of the Amtrack team training on a special ladder for getting inside of a train. Just think of the Coast Guard teams that intercept narco submarines, sometimes by jumping on the sub, banging on the hatch, and pointing their guns (maybe that was the military side of the CG, not sure) [1].
So the idea that each specialized agencies has specialized teams with specialized skills doesn't seem too far-fetched. The fact that there is a federal facility to centralize and standardize the training is actually a good thing. Give everyone a solid basic training, and then local training in their agency's special conditions, and that seems like an effecient way to handle the requirements.
As for why the US needs such SWAT teams all over the place, I think could be more debatable, but the rise of terrorism, however much overplayed is real (Oklahoma, 9/11, Paris, Paris again, etc.). As much as I think the Patriot act was a power grab and right-wing gift to the military-industrial complex, you also can't do nothing. Like I said, the US is a huge country, has lots of exposure and targets, and has made more than a few enemies (I wish it wouldn't).
And I really like the idea in the US that the military is not deployed against civilians, yet the federal governement needs some way to protect its facilities and activities (and policies, for example school desegregation). So federal agency police forces with appropriate military-style training seems to be the next best solution.
I agree that universities, school districts, and local police forces with SWAT equipment is really crossing the line. But that really is a separate issue, and looking at federal responsibilities and spheres of action, I think it does make sense.
My general take is that you are most likely to be oppressed by a local politician on a power trip.
Similarly, you are by and far more likely to be shot by your town’s police department than any other member of the government, because there are a lot more of them and they are a lot less trained and monitored than their federal counterparts.
That doesn’t mean places like DHS don’t do bad things, they do, but you should look at your local cops first.
> Similarly, you are by and far more likely to be shot by your town’s police department than any other member of the government, because there are a lot more of them and they are a lot less trained and monitored than their federal counterparts.
> That doesn’t mean places like DHS don’t do bad things, they do, but you should look at your local cops first.
I would posit that many places don't have police at the town-level. As you move away from the coasts where the cities are far and the towns sparsely populated, policing responsibilities tend to rest at the county level or in a sheriff's department or similar.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6,000 people, and we had a full time police that was very visible and then county sheriff that operated outside the city limits. There was one police officer per thousand people in the town.
They were very visible and everyone ended up having interactions with them at some point in their lives.
The one time I needed them in my life they were supremely unhelpful and unsympathetic. Basically said to me and my family “not our problem.” Ended up using social services instead, who got the sheriff involved, who immediately took action and was helpful, sympathetic, and checked in after their time assisting was over.
In hindsight, my town would have been better off allocating the police funding to drug rehab and social services, and just asking the sheriff to handle policing in the town.
It’s patently obvious that while most cops view themselves as protecting society from chaos, they do not see the actual citizens that make up said society as people that they are ultimately responsible to. And sometimes you’re lucky if they view the citizens that make up society as people at all, tragically.
I’m glad that the Sheriff was responsive and helpful though, it’s always nice to hear about public servants actually serving the public.
Every town I’ve ever lived in has had its own full police department, including when I lived in Colorado and Ohio. The small city (~30,000) I lived in Ohio had their own MRAP and quasi swat team, without justification in my opinion.
Even still, my general thesis would still apply at the county level.
> I suppose I'm meant to be disturbed by this apparent militarization of federal agencies...
Alternatively, you could meant to be detached but curious or pleased with the transparency of this release. Or, you could meant to be gleeful about the heavy armament that various departments have, or distressed by the transparency of the release. I'm never sure what I'm meant to think, so I'd look at the tone of the article. It appears to be the detached, informative variety.
One of the frequent complaints I've seen about militarized federal forces in DC and Portland is that they were largely unidentified. Is that lack of transparency concerning, pleasing, or neutral?
I am not sure what the article's intended message is, but I take the view that this shows just how militarized the government has gotten. Aggressive, violent action seems to be the first resort.
Cross agency collaboration is difficult in any government environment, but especially across the sprawling Federal workforce.
End of the day, these groups probably ultimately save money and provide a higher level of professionalism as opposed to practices like deputizing local police.
NASA needs a specialized unit because when it comes to large launches at Kennedy (144,000 acres), or Wallops (6,200 acres) they have to secure a significant amount of real estate. Terrorists and Nuts would love nothing more than use a surface-to-air missile against a launch. To head off that threat, you'd need real operators trained with small arms extensively, and not the contracted security most feds use. Kennedy looks like a mix of mangroves, swamp and dense terrain with gators in the water, and panthers about. Throw in a few extras at other locations to respond to an active shooter situation and that fits a fairly small team.
As far as another agency providing that security, if you do launches regularly, and have to pay for all the travel and TDY, it would get expensive in a quick hurry. Better to keep in house, and pay local law enforcement to help out where needed for the truly big launches, as 33 operators wouldn't go far enough with that much territory to protect. Federal LE probably helps in those big launches too.
NASA has some serious security concerns, but they're largely taken care of by the air force, coast guard, and friends. I'm sort of surprised to find out they have their own swat team when we're always hearing about "the coast guard helicopter finding a stray boat in the keep out zone" and so on.
After reading the report, the NASA SWAT team is specifically an emergency response team for major incidents that happen at Kennedy Space Center. It's not some roving security team patrolling landing sites, etc. It makes sense to me that a highly important site like the KSC would want to have a specialized emergency response team, and KSC doesn't exactly have a large city nearby or anything like that that could provide such ERT, so it makes sense that NASA created their own.
I suspect that's the case for most of these other "unusual" SWAT teams in the article. The Department of Interior's SWAT team, for example, is part of the US Park Police and provides ERT responsibilities for highly visible national monuments, like the Statue of Liberty or Washington Monument. The HHS SWAT team is the ERT for the NIH campus in Maryland, etc.
quote: NASA investigators then arranged the sting, where Conley met with Davis and her current husband at the Denny's restaurant at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.
It’s a bit off to call it a “sting” though when the NASA inspector general is the only one that thinks a crime is actually taking place.
Edit: to be clear, the IG is asserting in these cases either that the astronauts stole NASA property or that they illegally profited off of the mission (as later Apollo astronauts got in trouble for doing when they sold the personal effects they took with them).
However in most of these cases it’s clear that (1) these weren’t misplaced samples, but rather an extra rock they picked up and kept, for which there’s no law against; and (2) they didn’t profit off it, but rather freely gave chips of the rock to their wives, girlfriends, children, close friends, or just kept as a momento.
Now two generations later these Apollo era people are dying off and their estate is finding out that the little moon rock grandpa has is worth $10k/gram at auction, and trying to cash in. And when they do, NASA sends a SWAT team to their house.
That line of thinking destroyed the wealth of millions of people in the 2008 housing crash. So many people were certain it can’t happen only because it hasn’t happened.
well, finding and shipping a surface to air missile close to a launch site seems to be more complicated than finding a volunteer for a suicide attack, which can be done nearly everywhere. Also the current trend in terrorist attacks is the maximalisation of casualties, not necessarily property damage/symbolic targets
If you are curious about the trend of the militarization of the police I'd suggest reading "The Rise of the Warrior Cop" by Radley Balko.
One thing the book points out is that since the first SWAT team was formed in LA back in the 1960s, even law enforcement agencies with as few as 28 officers have SWAT teams. One of the things the author attributes this to is a "me too" attitude where one department hears another local agency has a SWAT team with special equipment and weapons. Somewhat jealously the agency decides they need one too. Even if the population they are serving has no history of the kinds of violent and/or dangerous crimes that normally require SWAT.
I’m not tremendously surprised by this. Even in countries with largely demilitarized police, like the U.K., there are odd groups with tactical response forces like the Civil Nuclear Constabulary... What matters is keeping these sorts of thing on-task and within the scope that they were established for.
The IRS has ordered a Remington 870 shotgun that’s pretty interesting. It’s the MCS, shorty, illegal for civilians without a tax stamp. Same version used in Afghanistan for breaching.
HHS is the parent of NIH, the CDC, and one of the US’s uniformed services, among other things, not just of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Their tactical team apparently belongs to NIH, which wouldn't have been my first guess.
>NIH's SRT, formally established in 2005, had previously been a hazardous materials response unit, but evolved to be able to respond to active shooters and other serious incidents at the Institute's campus in Bethesda, Maryland. NIH works with radioactive materials for medical research and infectious diseases, among other hazards, all of which present potential security risks.
Maybe instead I'm supposed to think these organizations are wasting taxpayer money on matters that are outside their wheelhouse.. maybe that's the case. I can see why NASA would need a security team but perhaps that could be more efficiently provided by another agency. The article doesn't really seem to make this argument though.
I suppose maybe I'm just being a grump and the article is meant for general edification with no agenda.