Update: I'm breaking that post, Before We Lose Another American City, in to four separate posts so people can better comment on the ideas included.
My impression is that police agencies and officers do a good job supporting each other in crises. I’ve read (but don’t have it here at my fingertips) that police officers from all over the country are in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast helping local law enforcement. My impression (admittedly ill-informed) is that this is pretty ad-hoc, although I believe that that there is already an interstate compact between about 40 states to provide emergency assistance to each other.
I wonder if the arrival of such reinforcements could be accelerated by some prior planning and more structure? Might it be time to create a police and fire rescuse Municipal Guard that is analogous to the National Guard? An organized reserve corps of individual police officers and deputies who can volunteer to be activated and transferred to the affected state's jurisdiction? Sure, it would be a motley crew with polyglot rescue equipment and communications system, but it may be better than nuthin’.
Police officers obviously differ from National Guardsmen. Although both may be used for law enforcement, it is policemen who do this on a daily basis. Police are better trained at law enforcement and have experience at using the minimum amount of force necessary to control an escalating situation. Our Guardsmen, among the best-trained soldiers in the world, are trained primarily for war. For understandable reasons, we generally don’t want soldiers, even Guardsmen, even Military Policemen, performing law enforcement. Much better to have civil police do the job, if possible.
Another big and obvious difference is that National Guardsmen are soldiers and police are civilians. Soldiers can be ordered to go to places where they don’t want to go. Civilians may usually decline. So a Municipal Guard would require individual officers to volunteer, and it would require their police departments to allow them to go.
If I were organizing this, I would create a Municipal Guard Bureau in DHS to fund and manage the program, maybe under DHS's Office for Domestic Preparedness (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/). I’m sure some smart Congressional staffers can figure it out.
When disaster strikes, the Governor could ask the President for police reinforcement. The DHS Municipal Guard Bureau would call the state Municipal Guard units for volunteers. The volunteers would get permission to go from their police departments and then assemble at the designated area for movement to the requesting state. If necessary, DoD could provide lift assistance.
Volunteer Fire Departments in rural areas might provide strategic depth for fire and rescue services. DHS would provide VFD’s with Municipal Guard money and training now, and the VFDs would also move to the assembly areas when needed.
Well, thems m’ thoughts at the moment. These certainly aren’t all the answers, maybe not any of the answers. But we’ve got to talk more about civic defense. It seems to me that most governors would welcome the opportunity to call on hundreds, even thousand, of responsive state and local forces who could help in hours, not days. For the system to work, all would have to voluntarily work hard together. Based on these last two weeks, I think there is a widespread willingness to do so. But we’ve got to get these systems and plans set up before the disaster strikes. Organizing this in the middle of the disaster would be exponentially harder.
UPDATE: Changed some stuff. Good thing no reads this blog but me.
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