Bringing Law n' Order to the "Might Be Difficult to Handle"

ST. BERNARD PARISH, La. - Maj. Pete Tufaro scanned the fenced lot packed with hundreds of stark white trailers soon to be inhabited by Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Shaking his head, he predicted the cramped quarters would ignite fights, hide criminals and become an incubator for crime, posing another test for his cash-strapped sheriff's department, which furloughed 206 of its 390 officers after the storm.

Tufaro thinks the parish has the solution: DynCorp International LLC, the Texas company that provided personal security to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and is one of the largest security contractors in Iraq. If the Federal Emergency Management Agency approves the sheriff's department's proposal, which would cost $70 million over three years, up to 100 DynCorp employees would be deputized to be make arrests, carry weapons, and dress in the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Department khaki and black uniforms...

But while the plan is for the DynCorp employees to eat and live with the other deputies in the same trailer camp, the hired guns would earn "significantly more" than the $18,000 annual salary of an entry-level deputy and the $30,000-a-year salary of a seasoned officer.

For DynCorp and other private security companies, the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, like Iraq, is a land of opportunity. Hired shortly after the storm to protect several New Orleans hospitals, its first domestic security job, the Texas firm has earned about $14 million from work in the Gulf Coast since Katrina, not all of which has involved security.

Blackwater USA, which protected the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and lost four employees in a brutal ambush in Fallujah in 2004, earned about $42 million through the end of December on a contract with Federal Protective Service, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, to provide security to FEMA sites. Most of the 330 contract guards now working in Louisiana are employed by the company...

...The FBI has warned that gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, could come attached to construction crews and establish operations, prompting the department to establish a strike team that has already arrested eight alleged members, police officials said.

Before the storm, the department tangled with "local toughs, slinging dope," not sophisticated international gangs, Stephens said. Added James Bernazzani, the FBI's special agent in charge in the region: "We would be naive to think that this being perhaps the largest construction boom for a region for a long, long time, we're talking eight to 10 years, that they might not try to take advantage of the situation..."

...Under the plan, DynCorp employees working for the sheriff's department would take over security at several FEMA trailer sites and establish three highway checkpoints. The DynCorp guards would report directly to a sheriff's deputy, who would be on site to supervise them, said Tufaro.

The department did not hold a competition before recommending DynCorp for the work but would consider other contactors if FEMA recommended it, said Tufaro. The department thinks DynCorp is the cheapest alternative, noting that it would charge less than $700 per day, compared with the $950 a day charged by Blackwater, he said.

But DynCorp also had an early advantage. The company designed the sheriff's department's trailer camp, a few miles from its former headquarters, under a sole-source contract. The camp houses offices and the deputies, many of whom expect to live there for years.

The DynCorp employees would be phased out as the parish returned to normal and the department's tax base was restored by the return of businesses and residents, law enforcement officials said...

[thanks to Vast Left Wing Conspiracy & Avedon Carol]

So FEMA can pay hired guns security companies for $700/ day/ person X 30 enforcers for the next few years until its cash flow gets normal but can't float the county a grant to hire 30 locals people until its cash flow gets normal?

It's like they say over at VLWC: Could somebody please explain the benefits of replacing $18-30K/yr police with $700-900/day rent-a-cops? Over the course of a year that's $255-328K per hired gun.

It's even better when you do the math: they laid off 300 deputies to hire 30 mercsprivate security contractors at 10 times as much each as the deputies giving a total savings of... ?

Somebody also better tell the Maj. to lock up his daughters if he has any.

...Ben Johnston, a DynCorp aircraft mechanic for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters in Kosovo, filed a lawsuit against his employer. The suit alleged that that in the latter part of 1999 Johnson "learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts."

The suit charges that "Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased..."

More on DynCorp and trafficking here.

More on the scope of the problem in America here.

DynCorp also has a bit of a drug problem- they run the drugs, and the trailer park-bound locals will have the problem.

The Maj. doesn't realize it, but he has bought himself a whole world of trouble.

That's assuming he doesn't own a piece of the action.

Nothin' like a Secure Homeland.