I’m putting a post together on the three muckers we’ve had this week – two here in the US, and one in Europe. Someone on one of my mailing lists pointed out this Reuters picture:
Captioned:
18 hours ago: U.S. Army soldiers from Ft. Rucker patrol the downtown area of Samson, Alabama after a shooting spree March 10, 2009. At least 10 people including the suspected gunman and his mother were killed in the shooting spree and car chase in southern Alabama on Tuesday, authorities said.
It’s kind of weird to me that the local LEO’s didn’t call for reinforcements (I assume they are neck-deep in investigating the horrible crime) from neighboring counties under mutual aid. Any thoughts of the non-black helicopter kind?
–
Another picture of US Army soldiers from Ft. Ruker guard a home with five bodies inside as investigators search for clues in Samson, Alabama at Bild.de
http://tinyurl.com/awo5nk
Thoughts of the non-black helicopter kind? Are we allowed to think of dark green ones? 30 miles south of USAACE. This is either a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, in which case people who actually care about such things should raise enough hell to get some justice done, or it isn’t, in which case everybody involved better have their stories straight.
Tin soldiers and Barry’s coming
We’re finally on our own
It seems that Posse Comitatus has been modified to permit guarding and “passive” assistance to law enforcement officers. Anything other than active pursuit of criminals and investigating crime seems to be onside.
From a
google cache of an entry on NORAD and U.S. Northern Command blog that dropped down the memory hole 14 hours ago:
To all of those who may have seen reporting on Reuters and http://www.infowars.com that CCMRF was used to support during AL shooting. This is not true. Support was provided via a mutual aid agreement between Ft Rucker, Ala,, and the affected cities. This mutual aid was approved by the Ft Rucker CDR and the appropriate Fort Rucker attorneys. USNORTHCOM was not involved in the decision-making process nor was the command a part of the deployment of active duty troops. This is a tragedy for all those involved and our hearts go out to all those affected. Please keep those affected in your thoughts and prayers.
Multiple crime scene perimeters, multiple crime scenes, high casualty count, international press interest, and a terrified/grieving local population, etc will quickly eat up the resources of a small police department, as well as those of surrounding agencies. It is nice that they have a mutual aid agreement to use resources from the nearby base in such an overwhelming and tragic incident.
“EMPLOYMENT OF TROOPS IN AID OF CIVIL AUTHORITIES”:http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title32/32-3.1.1.1.2.html
Allows the use of troops during civil unrest. Seems the definition of civil unrest is being stretched to me.
*_OR_*
A direct violation of Posse Comitatus?
I choose the latter.
bq. If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
Are you kidding? Local police are overwhelmed by an unthinkable crime and utilize an excellent resource to handle perimeter duties and you think it’s a threat to the liberty of your countrymen? C’mon, take a deep cleansing breath and try to view things with a bit more perspective. You’ll feel better.
Nope. Not kidding.
bq. May your chains set lightly upon you…
What was that about when they came for the Communists quote? /snark off
TK,
One lone gunman can overwhelm the entire county-wide law enforcement apparatus? Who know we were so fragile?
The ‘Heat’ shootout in LA? I was living a few blocks away. I saw the bullet holes afterwards. That was messed up.
One lone gunman is not the problem, it is the extent of the damage he caused, the number of areas and cities he impacted, the number of officers available in the entire county, the number of crime scenes, casualties, witnesses, evidence, etc, etc, etc….The entire county has a population of only 26k or so, how many cops do you think are available in a rural area like this? It ain’t Chicago. Yet this guy murdered 10 people in at least 4 different locations throughout the county. They probably average 1 homicide a year normally. This event, in that perspective, qualifies as a major disaster. Merely protecting crime scenes and dealing with the curious and the press while investigations are completed takes a large number of people. It makes good, pratical sense to be able to call upon a local military base to help in a crisis like this one, in a rural area without large numbers of cops. Worrying about a military coup is just silly and kind of paranoid.
TK, I’m not worried about it, but isn’t this the role of state police?
Alabama State Police are similar to California, in that they have investigative divisions (who are probably working this incident), protective services (the guys who travel with dignitaries) and highway patrol (who tend to keep just enough staff in each area to manage traffic for the population). Primary law enforcement duties are handled by local jurisdictions. It is unlikely that they had large numbers available to stand posts for long periods of time, as this would be an unusual function for them and they still have primary duties to perform. So I guess the answer is “no” that is not what they are for in this instance. In Alabama, the State Police are specialists, just lilke in many other states, including the one where I work.
oops, I almost forgot to mention response time…it takes time to get mutual aid in place for regular law enforcement agencies. Very few, in this economy, are running more cars than they need and it takes time to get people called in, outfitted and dispatched to a major event. It can take hours. It is probably much more efficient (though I have no personal experience of this)to order some local soldiers to put on traffic vests and stand guard on some locations under a pre-existing mutual aid agreement. This is the kind of cooperation that came out of events like Katrina and that should be encouraged in the interests of the community, rather than viewed with such suspicion.
Variation of my question, isn’t this what the National Guard is for? Civil unrest used to be their bread and butter, but I guess the Guard has become an instrumentality of the Army and many of them are serving overseas now.
BTW/ it was a little weird to see the Guard patrolling New Orleans at Mardi Gras last year, but they appeared to maintain low-profile supporting positions.
LTC Scott Wile, Director of Public Safety and Provost Marshall at Ft. Rucker, Alabama explains the military’s public role while assisting in law enforcement efforts at a shooting incident in southern Alabama on Mar 10th.
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=92444.0
So, here, in southern Alabama, we have mutual aid agreements with all of our local surrounding communities where they support us when we need help. We support them. We’ve had several natural disasters in the past such as a hurricane and a tornado. And we support each other in times of need. So, when this happened, we called down to one of the local police departments and offered our assistance. And they said, “Absolutely. We could use the military police.†So we went down. And all we did was provide a support role where we went…we took 20 MPs down there. The local law enforcement and the state law enforcement were establishing a cordon and taking care of the area. So we just provided support, went in. And allowed those…the state and local law enforcement folks to go and take a knee and drink water, go and get some food, just rest for a little while. We took their posts for them. And then when they came back, we moved on to other places to see where we could assist.
When we realized that this was gonna be a major undertaking, then what I did was I called and offered my assistance. And the police chief took me up on it. And we called in the soldiers and drove down there.
Sounds to me like the city of Samson did not request Fort Rucker’s assistance under their mutual support agreement, LTC Wile called them to volunteer and they said come on down.
I think we’ve settled the question. Multi-jurisdictional murders – meaning no mutual aid.
Small rural forces, so no ability to ‘surge’ from elsewhere in the area (not enough officers).
I’m mildly curious about the legalities, but I’ll call this one done.
Marc
Marc,
Good point, though I don’t think we can assume that every jurisdiction in the US will be afflicted with the sort of spectacularly lame leadership that those poor unfortunates had.
And TK’s point is even better: I was vastly overrating the size of the county there. 26K is even smaller than the small suburban city I live in, and we sure don’t have enough officers on duty to deal with that number of incidents.
We do, however, have the resources of Tacoma and all the other little cities in the metro area of ~800K population to draw on–and vice versa, too, I’ve seen our patrol cars heading into Tacoma to assist on a call–so even if we do have an agreement with Ft. Lewis stashed in the bottom of somebody’s file cabinet, as far as I know such a thing has never been needed in my half-century lifetime.
Someone reports that The Army is investigating the use of troops here.