Storm-battered parish considers hired guns

Contractors in Louisiana would make arrests, carry weapons

By Renae Merle
The Washington Post
Updated: 1:06 a.m. ET March 14, 2006

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.

"You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between us and them," said Tufaro, who developed the proposal.

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"Katrina broke all of the rules. It was the first time you had the deployment of armed private security contractors in the U.S.," said Peter W. Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry."

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This is exactly how public private partnerships work and will be sold to the public as a benefit.

The government no longer having the means to "protect the citizens" must seek help from private companies in this case Dyncorp.

Mussolini called it corporatism. (government and business combined) During WWII it was called fascism and we fought against it. Now we are surrendering to it because it's being sold as a security beneifit. If we thought it was such a bad idea then...why should we accept it as a good idea now?

 

I don't like it either and I'm in total agreement with you on this Dragoon. I think we are looking at how things will be done in America from now on. Public private partnerships are all the global rage today.

Government and business combined = corporatism. In fascism private business was subservient to government now it's government becoming subservient to private and international business interests.

All this does is give governmental control of our infrastructure over to private business interests.

Who will the Sheriff be taking orders from, those that elected him to his office or a private business that promises to solve his immediate money and security problems?

 

The county hiring mercenaries does seem to be an act of desperation doesn't it? Still doesn't explain why private interests are being given governmental control over the rest of our infrastructure though. Like ports, highways, water sheds, national monuments, reserves and such.

We must be desperate to allow our government to be redesigned to benefit private international interests.

 

Amen to that Dragoon! Where are all the citizens that should be volunteering to help their county Sheriff's dept and communities out?