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Lakeport Vs. al-Qaeda

5-14-03

 

It isn't every day our local board of supervisors can take a stand against international terrorism, but this last Tuesday they gave potential evil-doers in Lake County a double dose of rural American terrorist deterrent. By a unanimous vote, anti-terrorism grants from both the state and the feds were given the "thumbs up", bringing our total of grants approved for that purpose to three this year so far. The first grant was for over$93,000, with the latest two coming in at $149,652 from the state, and

$63,275 from the fine folks at the Office of Homeland Security back in D.C.. All three grants were limited to purchasing gear to designed to combat the WMD scourge, so many of the items on the first wish list got beefed-up with more of the same in the second and third editions.

 

What did they buy to keep al-Qaeda at bay? Nothing, actually, since everything as far as equipment being purchased goes is designed to deal with the aftermath of an attack, rather than the prevention of one. In fact, just one week before the remotely-funded spending-spree got Lakeport's official blessing, the same gang of five decided that over a half-dozen Sheriff Deputies and Correctional Officers would be fired in order to balance the books, making the whole concept of foiling an attack that much more unlikely. But while the prevention aspect is lagging, we now DO have an impressive number of bio/Chem protective suits, gloves and boots, and plenty of respirators and SCUBA tanks. How likely is it that they will ever be

used, besides during training exercises? Considering that the only time this nation has ever had to deal with the bio-chem-nuke threat was the anthrax letters sent shortly after 9-11, the odds of Lake County's first responders coming up against the WMD scenario are virtually nil, just like every other rural area in the country.

 

However, despite the obvious questions that should have been asked and answered regarding the relatively large amount money being spent on stuff that would almost certainly never be used, the grant requests were relegated to the lowly consent agenda, home of the trivial and mundane official county matters to be approved every week. So the Lake County Green party stepped in, and asked that the issue be put on the timed agenda so there would be at least some kind of token discussion before the grant requests were approved. The timing of the debate turned out to be less than ideal, coming shortly after embarrassing revelations were made regarding a county-run program that employed three generations of the same family in key positions, who were doing their best to hide their questionable hiring practices and almost non-existent accounting methods. Making matters worse was the fact that visiting supervisors from Glenn County were in attendance, so the guests got an unseemly glimpse of how things are done in our little fiefdom. With egg on their faces and a schedule lagging far behind the planned time the supervisors took on the grant request issue, in an even testier mood than usual.

 

According to the report coming from the Sheriff's department, several juicy targets were undefended around the county, though none of the gear purchased seemed to be geared toward changing that situation, since the hardware was

designed for post-disaster use. Nor was the question asked why or how the county would be responsible for providing security for Calpine's geothermal plants or Reynolds Systems rocket and bomb production facility near

Middletown, two of the main concerns terrorist-wise. But logic didn't factor into the Sheriff's song-and-dance about how we

needed to be prepared to deal with the aftermath of a bio/chem/nuke attack, which was backed-up with more of the same type of imaginative fear mongering by Office of Emergency services head Chris Macedo. Like the supervisors, the Sheriff was also in a bit of a huff, since due to the pace of the morning's proceedings he had to cool his heels for a half hour waiting for his chance to hype a plan he thought would have slid through the process without a single word of comment or debate.

 

The Green Party pointed out that the odds were that the gear being bought would likely rot in storage and never be used, and that the money would be better spent re-hiring the fired deputies, who could possibly foil the highly improbable attacks being described by the Sheriff. Supervisor Smith said that he had earthquake insurance on his home but didn't think he'd ever

use it, so the same logic applied to the WMD gear. Apparently Smith was unable to discern between the guaranteed certainty that Lake County wouldmcontinue to have significant seismic activity and the almost infinitesimally small chance of Bin Laden coming to town in order to wreak havoc. Supervisor Lewis was even shallower in his rational, simply saying that we were better safe than sorry, apparently Gary didn't want to or wasn't able to analyze the issue any further than that insightful observation. Supervisor Brown asked if some of the stuff could be used for other purposes, like drug lab clean-up, and was assured that could be done, though it wasn't mentioned that infrequent task has been handled quite adequately in the past with the haz-mat gear already on hand. Supervisor Robey went off in another odd tangent, pointing out that the city of Los Angeles was getting over six million dollars to deal with the WMD threat, apparently Ed felt secure in the knowledge that the government's largess was widespread in it's scope and scale, and by golly we were going to get our share of the pork! Supervisor Farrington limited his input to asking what the grants would do to protect our lake, and seemed satisfied with the response that was too big and obvious a problem to do anything about.

 

So the request was approved unanimously, with no further analysis or sweating the details, of which there were many. None of the supes asked how many guys we could suit-up in haz-mat gear at one time, or if there was some number of protective suits that would be enough for the Sheriff-or if was he going to need more to deal with the imaginary threat. Sheriff Mitchell DOES like to be prepared for every contingency, and has stockpiled so many assault weapons that his deputies can have one-and-a-half of them apiece, justifying it by stating that he likes "overkill". Also not mentioned was what ongoing costs there would be involving the storage and maintenance of the piles of hardware, or how much time would be diverted from real law enforcement/public safety duties in order to train personnel on the usage of the gear. If the past is any guide, Mitchell and Macedo will be back again soon, with another request for things to deal with problems we don't have, while even less money gets spent on the things to tackle the abundance of real-world law enforcement dilemmas found in our crime-ridden community.

 

 

hellsbnd@pacific.net

 

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