While watching
the non-stop news feed coming out of Boston during the manhunt, I was
struck by the way that I saw citizens reacting to the military
takeover of their community. There were scenes of citizens leaving
their homes, all quietly complying with orders issued by police in
military full body armor carrying automatic weapons.
Where did the
Boston police get this kind of equipment and why do they have so much
of it? The simple answer is that they get it from the Department of
Homeland Security. In fact the secretary of the DHS, Janet
Napolitano, told a Senate panel on April 17 that the Boston bombing
showed the importance of the grants that DHS has given to cities and
states.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has supported eight exercises in Boston in the past 3 years to prepare for attacks, she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The agency also provided training to 5,500 Boston-area first responders on how to handle various types of attacks and mass-casualty situations."These investments have proven their value time and again, and they greatly aided the response 2 days ago," Napolitano said.
In fact,
according to Atlantic Cities, Boston is one of the best prepared
cities in the United States.
Over the past decade, the Department of Homeland Security has funneled billions of dollars towards the protection of U.S. cities. Boston is one of the DHS's "Tier 1" U.S. metro areas -- in DHS's view, one of the country's ten most likely targets for terrorism. The Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), the largest part of the Homeland Security Grant Program, distributes half a billion dollars annually to 31 U.S. metros, and sent $11 million to Boston in the 2012 fiscal year.The Metro Boston Homeland Security Region (MBHSR) -- nine cities including Boston -- directs that money into an array of local counterterrorism programs. In the past few years, the MBHSR has upgraded over 5,000 portable radios for first responders and installed a communication system inside the tunnels of the Boston T.Part of that money must go towards live drills, so over the past couple years, Boston has conducted two citywide disaster simulations with Cytel Group's Urban Shield, using the preparation and after-action reports from the first trial (in May 2011) to improve the city's preparedness in the second, in November 2012. (The city also hosted an emergency management summit last August.)
Boston has
conducted two city-wide disaster drills in the last two years
according to NPR. In fact there has been speculation that there was
a drill going on during the marathon. A University of
Mobile coach who was running in the race stated:
"At the starting line this morning, they had bomb sniffing dogs and the bomb squad out there," he said. "They kept announcing to runners not to be alarmed, that they were running a training exercise."
He added, "I've run a lot of races like this one, but I never saw bomb dogs at the starting line of any running event. It led me to believe that something like (a bomb detonation) might have happened."
And all this
training has not just been in Boston. A google search for the term
“mass casualty drill” turns up many results across the country.
Washington
(state)
Wisconsin
Indiana
Ohio
Maryland
South Carolina
And there was
even a drill planned for the Waco Texas area on the very day of the
tragic West fertilizer plant explosion.
There have been
mass casualty drills for years. Most of them have been for natural
disasters. The difference is that the drills today are for bombings,
mass shootings, nuclear, biological and chemical substances. Another
difference is the involvement of DHS money, personnel and equipment.
And the equipment
from DHS is not just paramilitary and disaster related. Much of it
is surveillance equipment. The DHS is funding items such licenseplate readers, cameras and the newest trend, drones. The federal
government also funds the software to make all of this equipment
useful. And, they coordinate all the surveillance data in the local
fusion center.
The Department of Homeland Security was formed after the World Trade Center attacks on
September 11, 2001. It was established on November 25, 2002. In
that short time, it has grown to over 200,000 employees with a budget
of $98.8 billion. They have given $38.3 billion in grants to local
and state governments since 2003. Additionally, they provide
intelligence, assistance and advice that keep local governments in
step with the policies of the Executive Branch. They are big,
getting bigger and they
are where you live.
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