Exporting our "first responders": local police and emergency personnel man the front lines of "homeland defense"--yet tens of thousands have been sent to fight overseas. (Law Enforcement).

"The country's security comes first when the country reaches out and says we need your skills to fight this war," explained Army Reservist Jim Howatson, a captain in the Tacoma, Washington, police department. "There's no question that's where you're going to go."

But Ed Troyer, another law enforcement officer in Washington, wonders if fighting the war on terrorism abroad will leave us dangerously vulnerable at home. "When you decimate a police department, that's going to affect the safety of people at home, because there's a good chance the war is going to be fought on our soil as well," the Pierce County police detective told Seattle's KOMO-TV last January. "And if terrorists are going to be here, we need to keep our people to combat that here at home."

Across the nation, "local police and fire departments ... will face a loss of personnel [as] the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps mobilize reserve units to provide troop and logistical support," noted a November 25, 2002 UPI report. Long before the invasion of Iraq began, the Pentagon understood that the war would require activating "a substantial number of police officers and firefighters who are part-time soldiers, leaving local officials to figure out how to fill the gaps in their ranks at a time when bridges, power plants, and other potential terrorist targets need protection.

Randy Bruegman, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, told ABC News on January 25th: "We're going to lose upwards of 75,000 firefighters over the next several months with the reserve call-up. Those called up for war duty overseas tend to be veteran firefighters with critical skills that would be needed in the event of a terrorist attack at home." "We may be extracting the one person who is the hazardous materials specialist out of a community, or the one person who has been involved with terrorism response over the course of the last two or three years," Bruegman observes.

In 29 states, reported ABC, "between 5 percent and 10 percent of the [police] troopers belong to the National Guard or Reserves--and could be called up." "It's not just the sheer numbers that we're losing, but it's the experience that goes with those numbers," observed Chattanooga police Chief Jimmie L. Dotson, a Vietnam veteran. "You are looking at people who are averaging anywhere from five to 10 years of experience in the policing profession and you don't make up that experience overnight."

Losing experienced officers has devastated many police agencies in smaller communities. "For the smaller departments, one person being gone really impacts that department," comments Hampton, New Hampshire, Police Chief Bill Wrenn. Filling the gap often means either paying overtime--or reducing police coverage. "Those departments are losing people and, with the economic climate being what it is, it's hard to find money to fill the slots," observes George DiBlasi of the Massachusetts Police Chiefs Association.

Numbers and Experience

The lack of street-savvy, experienced local police is a national security liability at a time when officers across the nation are the first defense against another terrorist attack. While Chief Dotson understands and respects the decision of many police officers who enlist in the Guard and Reserves, he notes: "We still have to cover and secure our home turf"--something that local police, fire, and emergency response agencies, already over-stretched and under-funded, may be unable to do if and when the "other shoe" drops.

Chief Dotson points out that experience (which is difficult to quantify) matters more than numbers in assessing the impact of the reserve call-up. Still, the numbers tell a dramatic and troubling story.

As of February 12th, according to a Gannett News Service analysis, "16 percent of all reservists and National Guard troops have been called to active duty" nationwide. "17 states and Puerto Rico have had 20 percent or more of their Guard troops and reservists mobilized," observed the GNS report. "North Dakota--at 29 percent--is the state with the highest percentage of activated troops." "It's a difficulty," observes Mike Rounds, governor of South Dakota, where 21 percent of reservists and Guard troops have been activated. "It's a burden, anytime you have to send somebody off to war. It impacts almost every single family in our state. There are very few people who don't know somebody who's on active duty."

Many police enlist in the Guard and Reserves out of financial necessity, a trend that has accelerated in recent years amid a plunging economy, expanding state deficits, and contracting police budgets. And the military--a mere shadow of the force that fought Gulf War I--badly needs the reservists (many of whom had military experience prior to becoming police) to fill specialized positions.

With local police in financial need, and the military desperate for manpower, something had to give--and in this case, the loser is homeland security.

The "Solution"

"All ... states and territories are providing support for the war on terrorism," states Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stone-king. "We're certainly not going and saying, 'Well, let's take all the assets from a certain state.' We're one country."

While it is true that we are one country, our federal system is one in which several governments--local, state, and federal--divide power and responsibilities. And in matters of law enforcement and community security, it is the separate states, rather than the central government, that has primary responsibility. As James Madison explained in The Federalist, No. 45: "The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and ... internal order"--or what is now called "homeland security."

The Bush administration's National Strategy for Homeland Security, published last July, inverts our constitutional framework by treating "first responders"--meaning local police, firemen, and emergency personnel--as agents of the federal Department of Homeland Security. According to the Bush administration's plan, "the homeland security community will view the federal, state, and local governments as one entity...." The document repeatedly emphasizes that it presents "a national, not a federal, effort"-illustrating the administration's determination to fuse tens of thousands of local and state law enforcement agencies into a centrally directed internal security apparatus.

The federal Homeland Security Department, following that strategy, is "organizing the training of local responders," assembling central databases on threats, vulnerabilities, and security assets, and disbursing $3.5 billion in federal aid to "first responders" nationwide. Of course, with federal aid comes federal control. But many local police agencies, already hamstrung by budget constraints, deal with crippling manpower shortages because of the reserve call-up and will be eager for all the "help" Washington can provide.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), an energetic proponent of nationalizing law enforcement, cites the strains placed on that state's police and fire departments by the reserve call-up as justification for increased federal aid. "Many area first responders are getting hit with double duty," Schumer correctly observes. "On one hand, they're being asked to deal with the security problems of the post-9/l 1 world. On the other, they're being asked to serve overseas, which they are doing with distinction.... All I'm asking is that the feds give us the wherewithal to ensure that homeland security isn't unduly weakened while they're gone."

George C. Wilson of the influential National Journal points out that more money from Washington will not solve the problems created by the current manpower crunch. To relieve the pressure on state and local "first responders," Wilson contends, it will be necessary to reinstitute a draft to provide adequate military manpower.

"If terrorists were to mount attacks with weapons of mass destruction in several American cities simultaneously, perhaps in retaliation for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, who would control the panic, stop the looters, and tend to those stricken by poison gas or deadly germs?" wrote Wilson in the January 14th issue of Government Executive. "Local police and firefighters would be overwhelmed. And the governors might have no National Guardsmen because they would all be overseas, backing up the active force." With this in mind, Wilson insists, Congress should at least consider the possibility of reviving the draft and "trying to re-instill a sense of obligation to defend the country."

Who's Defending the Home Front?

Roughly half of our military personnel and a sizeable portion of our National Guardsmen and "first responders" have been deployed in and around Iraq. According to President Bush, this extraordinary deployment is a legitimate exercise in "pre-emptive" defense against the possibility of nuclear, chemical, or biological terrorism. "We will not wait to meet this danger with firefighters and doctors and police on the streets of our own cities," declared President Bush in a March 26th speech to military personnel at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. "Instead we are meeting this danger today with our Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines."

But the president's "pre-emptive" war has actually increased the danger to our nation. The aggressive war on Iraq has made terrorist retaliation more likely, rather than less. And with military call-ups skimming the cream of state and local "first responders," communities nationwide are more vulnerable now than they were prior to 9-11.