Second Honorable Mention, Coast Guard Essay Contest
The U.S. Coast Guard's cutter and maritime law enforcement communities share a problem—law enforcement personnel retention and training. The cutter community must train shipboard law enforcement teams and maintain personnel law enforcement qualifications while coping with reduced crew size and increased operational requirements. Facing similar challenges, the law enforcement community struggles to retain qualified personnel. Expanding the role of existing law enforcement detachments to deploy on board Coast Guard cutters has the potential to benefit both communities, while improving the Coast Guard's performance of its maritime law enforcement mission.
New Initiatives & Old Issues
In 1999, the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted nearly 50.7 metric tons of cocaine—the most cocaine seized in any one-year period and a 2.1% increase over 1998 figures. Despite this success, South American suppliers are thought to have exceeded North American narcotics demand.
Undaunted, Coast Guard personnel aggressively seek to outmaneuver their opponents with innovative tactics and technologies. The Gallatin (WHEC-721), Seneca (WMEC906), and Helicopter Intercept Squadron (Hitron) 10's very successful "limited-scope deployment" of an armed helicopter and over-the-horizon rigid-hull inflatable boat signaled a dramatic improvement to the Coast Guard's ability to effectively and relatively safely intercept narcotraffickers. Elsewhere, tactical law enforcement teams used racing-style deployable pursuit boats (DPBs) to remove the advantages of speed and maneuverability from traffickers' "go-fast" operations. Additional innovations in nonlethal technologies provide unit commanders with practical alternatives to warning shots and disabling fire for the apprehension of these go-fasts.
Coast Guard policy shapers are exploring concepts ranging from deploying highly specialized counterdrug and alien migrant interdiction "reaction teams" to establishing a new Joint Tactical Law Enforcement Command. Evidence of a headquarters-level willingness to explore additional tactics includes the training of selected Gallatin, Seneca, and Pacific Area Tactical Law Enforcement Team personnel in helicopter vertical insertion and fast-roping techniques at Coast Guard Group Key West and Marine Corps Camp Lejeune facilities.
Amid the excitement of these new law enforcement tactics and equipment, however, an old issue threatens to check what progress the Coast Guard has made. Maritime law enforcement personnel are not trained adequately and in sufficient number to perform all operational taskings. And they will not be unless equal attention is given to retaining those experienced men and women who daily place their lives on the line to achieve mission objectives.
It is not as if the Commandant were not already aware of the situation. "We are seeing several readiness warnings," he wrote in an open letter to the American public, citing personnel shortages, equipment failure, and on-the-job accidents. "Our `can do' attitude sometimes belies our `able to do' capabilities ... dedication is not an acceptable long-term substitute for adequate equipment and resources." Proposing for the remainder of his tenure as Commandant to focus on "restoring the readiness of and shaping the future of our Coast Guard," Admiral James M. Loy set ambitious goals toward rebuilding the workforce, improving retention, implementing greater training initiatives, and eliminating experience shortfalls.
The Gallatin Case Study
Nevertheless, law enforcement improvements continue to center on technological and tactical initiatives. The Gallatin's experience maintaining personnel qualifications while engaged in Operation New Frontier from the fall of 1998 until the summer of 1999 highlights the need for rethinking training and deployment options for law enforcement personnel.
During the initial stages of the limited-scope deployment of an over-the-horizon rigid-hull inflatable boat (OTH RHIB) and armed helicopter on board the Gallatin, logistical and tactical issues naturally took precedence over more routine matters to ensure a smooth integration of the cutter's and the assigned aviation detachment's efforts. Boarding team personnel were told that their contributions would not be significantly different from their normal maritime law enforcement role, but one day prior to departing Key West, select Gallatin law enforcement personnel underwent just-in-time training to complete required physical fitness testing for full qualification as OTH RHIB crew. Interest in maintaining qualifications waned among Gallatin boarding team personnel when only a few were required for actual operations. These select personnel provided continuity throughout critical testing phases of OTH RHIB operations, as they became familiar with deploying nonlethal technologies alongside noncompliant go-fasts, firing warning shots from the boat's mounted M-60, and operating sophisticated communications and radar equipment.
When not under way conducting operations, the Gallatin's work lists mirrored those of any cutter. Surplus time during which needed law enforcement team training could be conducted was virtually nonexistent. In an effort toward compromise, the command authorized law enforcement team personnel to train twice weekly, depending on the cutter's work schedule. Training would commence one hour before the morning's expiration of liberty, with the stipulation that members would report to their divisional spaces within two hours, prepared to "turn to ship's work." Predictably, attendance at the pre-dawn training dropped quickly, as the command and maritime law enforcement training team worked together to develop alternative ways to train and qualify personnel.
Despite best efforts, the Gallatin struggled to maintain two six-person ready teams. The single Spanish-speaking interpreter had to serve on both teams, and the cutter had to fight to retain the two engineers who augmented each boarding team's knowledge of suspect vessels' engineering plant configurations. Annual and six-month law enforcement qualifications occasionally lapsed for members who missed training because of leave or cutter watch-standing or maintenance requirements.
The Gallatin's 11 law enforcement volunteers frequently sacrificed liberty, sleep, and time that could have been spent pursuing advancement to perform this necessary collateral duty. Only three actually participated as OTH RHIB law enforcement boat crew in Operation New Frontier. The other eight personnel waited patiently either for the Gallatin to resume normal law enforcement operations or for a transfer to their next assignment where they might put their training and skills to practical application.
The Gallatin's experience illustrates what has become an organizational challenge—maintaining qualified and enthusiastic law enforcement personnel on board units burdened with heavy workloads and ever-changing operational tasking. Lessons learned from her New Frontier operations suggest the following:
- Successful employment of advanced tactics and technologies requires developing appropriate skill sets.
- Sustaining personnel qualifications and developing law enforcement skills require a coordinated and dedicated effort on the part of commands, training officers, and individual boarding team personnel.
- Physical demands of the law enforcement mission require a continuous emphasis on fitness.
- Law enforcement teams draw strength from diversity; interpreters and engineers augment team skills.
These observations point overwhelmingly to the need for an increased Coast Guard commitment to developing knowledgeable and capable law enforcement personnel concurrent with the implementation of new tactics and technology. Current knowledge requirements are minimum guidelines, but field-level law enforcement teams need more. With the integration of nonlethal technologies, coordinated OTH RHIB and armed helicopter tactics, and deployable pursuit boats, they will require intense training and opportunities to practice acquired skills to ensure counterdrug operations are handled safely and efficiently.
Toward Specialization
In light of the armed helicopter's primary law enforcement mission, Commander Mike Emerson, the Coast Guard's Chief of Drug Interdiction, offers similar observations concerning helicopter crew training. "Specialized law enforcement expertise may overshadow the historic preference for multi-mission experience," he postulates. Citing the need for familiarization with "legal authority, use of force doctrine, weapons proficiency, self-defense . . and current smuggling trends," he argues that the financial costs of training personnel, in addition to the time and energy required to maintain their qualifications, "may justify long-term specialization" in interdiction operations.
Counterdrug specialization is nothing new for the Coast Guard law enforcement community. Established in 1982, Coast Guard law enforcement detachments (LEDets) were charged with becoming experts in law enforcement operations. Four years later, Congress authorized LEDets to conduct drug interdiction operations while embarked on naval surface vessels. Since that time, LEDet missions have expanded to include deployment on British and Dutch West Indies Guard ships in support of drug interdiction, training U.S. Navy personnel in boarding procedures, embargo enforcement in the Persian Gulf, local and special operations related to port and national security, interagency law enforcement, ion-scan unit operation to assist foreign governments during dockside boarding evolutions, employment as law enforcement flight observers, training Coast Guard, federal, state, and local law enforcement units, and more.
Despite their multimission tasking, LEDet personnel remain proficient in counterdrug operations, claiming responsibility for 9 of the top 20 Coast Guard cocaine seizures since 1993. These accomplishments are even more significant given that LEDet program strength at any given time is not more than 216 members assigned among three regional commands.
When Tactical Law Enforcement Team (TacLET) North, based out of Portsmouth, Virginia, accepted responsibility for bringing deployable pursuit boats on line early in 1999, the command looked to LEDet personnel to augment its fledgling teams, TacLET North, the parent command for nine Atlantic Area law enforcement detachments, recognized that shifting select personnel internally to fill the new DPB billets would prevent staffing delays. DPB personnel, already possessing TacLET law enforcement qualifications, as well as coxswain and small boat engineering skills, were able to concentrate on working with the new Fountain race boats and building a practicable training program. TacLET North then backfilled the LEDet vacancies with newly reported personnel. Although the effected LEDets experienced temporary discomfort at the loss of qualified personnel, TacLET North was able to use LEDet personnel to great advantage.
Cutter/LEDet Integration
LEDet law enforcement experience and counterdrug knowledge could serve the Coast Guard as well as they have TacLET North. Deploying highly trained LEDet teams, outfitted with the Coast Guard's latest technologies, on board Coast Guard cutters is the sensible next step toward improving counterdrug operations. Although LEDet teams occasionally have deployed on board cutters in the past, future operations will require a well-defined memorandum of understanding between the detachment's parent command and the cutter community to avoid misunderstandings concerning LEDet responsibilities while attached to the cutter. Accomplishment of mission objectives and team/crew integration would rely on both the cutter and the LEDet working together in the appropriate spirit of cooperation.
Expansion of the LEDet program in this manner could:
- Alleviate the burden on minimally manned cutter crews to maintain qualified law enforcement teams
- Provide cutters with a rested and physically fit standby law enforcement reaction team
- Eliminate the requirement for cutters to maintain law enforcement equipment; LEDet teams would arrive fully outfitted
- Supply commands with comprehensive training on boarding procedures, use of force, and defensive tactics and opportunities for ship's personnel to contribute as security and sweep personnel
- Provide technical expertise in OTH RHIB maintenance, ionscan operation, and nonlethal technologies
- Minimize risk associated with exposing cutter personnel to new products without standardized training; paintball maloderants, sting-ball grenades, and Kevlar net entanglers should require predeployment familiarization
- Make counterdrug mission specialists available to commands
In addition, pairing deployed cutters with LEDet personnel has the potential to benefit the law enforcement community. The greater emphasis on LEDet personnel serving as knowledgeable, skilled professionals in maritime law enforcement would necessitate additional training and could justify regularly sending LEDet personnel to valuable formal schools and courses offered through Coast Guard, DoD, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center facilities, such as language fluency, container climbing, advanced defensive tactics, fast-roping, counterterrorism, tactical procedures, hidden compartment detection, narcotics identification, marksmanship, and emergency medicine. These courses currently are parceled out as unit budgets allow, but expansion of LEDet operations could secure steady funding.
For the Coast Guard to make the most of its highly trained LEDet personnel, TacLET tours should be lengthened to four years, with the option of voluntary extension. Requiring payback time for particularly intensive training, such as Spanish-language immersion, would help the Coast Guard recoup its investment. Previous or subsequent assignment to other Coast Guard law enforcement training commands, such as the International Training Division, Maritime Law Enforcement School, or one of several regional training teams, would help share and maintain the community's corporate knowledge.
There is reason to believe expansion of the LEDet program would benefit more than just the law enforcement and afloat communities. Deploying LEDet teams on board Coast Guard cutters would provide additional platforms to which female personnel could deploy. Currently, berthing on U.S. Navy ships assigned to counterdrup operations limits deployment opportunities for female LEDet officers and makes it impractical to assign female enlisted personnel to LEDet teams at all.
Increasing the number of LEDet teams available for deployment also would help fill short-notice assignments to joint counterdrug operations with local, federal, or foreign law enforcement. In addition, the greater the strength of the LEDet complement, the more flexibility TacLET would have to deploy personnel for surge operations. During the recent interagency operation to remove protestors from Vieques, a call for force augmentation by Coast Guard commands in Puerto Rico emptied the three Coast Guard TacLET offices and necessitated the removal of LEDet teams from previously scheduled counterdrug deployments.
Finally, expansion of the LEDet program could help stem the outflow of knowledgeable and experienced maritime law enforcement personnel. During 1998-1999, 87 of 128 Coast Guard LEDet personnel eligible for release from active duty elected to leave. Of departing personnel, 69% either matriculated into college programs to pursue degrees in law enforcement specialties or found employment with another law enforcement agency. If the Coast Guard put a greater emphasis on advanced training and offered more opportunities for LEDet members to stay in the law enforcement community, more law enforcement personnel might choose to remain on active duty.
The afloat and law enforcement communities each have made great sacrifices to live up to the Coast Guard's "can do" reputation. Combining their strengths could help ease training, retention, and operational stresses while pursuing the Commandant's goal of restoring readiness to both communities.
Lieutenant Messing is an officer in charge of a counterdrug law enforcement detachment based out of Tactical Law Enforcement Team North, Portsmouth, Virginia. A 1997 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, she has served on the Gallatin (WHEC-721) as deck watch officer and as maritime law enforcement training and boarding officer.