Stephen Peacock writes:
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is recruiting private security forces to load, transport and unload "multi-ton" shipments of seized marijuana en route to destruction in Arizona. It's conducting what is known as a "sources sought" inquiry to determine the availability of commercial firms that can provide on-call deployments of armed contractors to protect these bulk transports of pot.Bill Conroy:"The work to be performed will be the loading of multi-ton quantities of marijuana at a secure site, providing protection and security enroute to the destruction facility, offloading multi-ton quantities of marijuana at the destruction facility, and providing security until all the marijuana is destroyed," the sources-sought notice said.
The privatizing of these drug runs, however, is of great concern, the law enforcement sources say. Private contractors, they contend, have a history of cutting corners to save a buck. As a result, “it’s proven that criminals slip through the (hiring) process,” one law enforcer explains.Conroy cites another bangup job by the Feds...when they used subcontractors to do the security background checks on potential Border Patrol Agents: Border agent said to also be smuggler.
A Mexican man who used a fake U.S. birth certificate to get into the Border Patrol was helping to smuggle illegal immigrants, authorities said yesterday.I'm as big a fan of privatization as the next (conservative) guy, but not when it comes to Federal hiring positions, that's for sure.Oscar Antonio Ortiz, 28, an El Cajon-based Border Patrol agent on administrative leave, was arrested yesterday and charged in San Diego federal court with falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen.
He also is charged with conspiring with another Border Patrol agent to smuggle immigrants and is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court this morning.
The story continues...Fun with Federal subcontracting!
Read it all.
Posted by Kyer at August 14, 2005 12:09 PM | TrackBack