Seattle Fire Department’s hazardous-materials team was called out to The Seattle Times about 12:30 p.m. today after another suspicious envelope containing an unidentified substance was found in the mail.
In the last five years, Cook County has gotten nearly $43 million from the U.S. Homeland Security Department for Project Shield, a program that’s supposed to equip all 128 suburbs countywide with state-of-the-art video cameras.
Call it half a win for New York’s dirty bomb detection system.
The pursuit of bureaucratic dominance after 9/11 gave us the divorce of counter-terror from counter-crime, creating a duopoly that is massively expensive in terms of money, manpower and effectiveness. Illegal immigration and smuggling are becoming a major focus of manpower, and runs the risk of the same bureaucratic wrangling that sacrifices effect and efficiency in the name of departmental primacy.
If Americans think we have problems with the recent disruption of a suspected terrorist cell in New York, they haven’t seen anything yet.
As more drugs and illegal aliens are being smuggled northbound, there has been a similar spike in guns and cash heading south. The same false dashboard compartments and hollowed suitcases that carry contraband into the United States are used to move the cash back into Mexico. With the flood of drugs heading north, and the flood of guns traveling south – and the illicit revenues flowing in both directions – it is disconcerting to realize that, nearly a year into the Obama Administration, there is still no nominee to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. No nominee to take charge of the ATF – the law enforcement bureau responsible for enforcing gun and explosives laws. That the man nominated to head of Customs and Border Protection still waits idly to be confirmed.
When he submitted his resignation in March of this past year, Rod Beckstrom, the then-Director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC) delivered one of the more incendiary “I quit” letters. It would seem, as undiplomatic as Beckstrom’s resignation may have been by typical Washington standards, his ability to “call ‘em like you see them” was accurate.
The days of being able to walk through airport security checkpoints while wearing shoes and a jacket could return if an experimental program proves successful, some Department of Homeland Security officials say.
In recent years, violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated dramatically, due largely to the Mexican government’s efforts to disrupt Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO). U.S. officials note the violence associated with Mexican DTOs poses a serious challenge for U.S. law enforcement, threatening citizens on both sides of the border, and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials generally agree many of the firearms used to perpetrate crimes in Mexico are illicitly trafficked from the United States across the Southwest border. GAO was asked to examine (1) data on the types, sources, and users of these firearms; (2) key challenges confronting U.S. government efforts to combat illicit sales of firearms in the United States and stem the flow of them into Mexico; (3) challenges faced by U.S. agencies collaborating with Mexican authorities to combat the problem of illicit arms; and (4) the U.S. government’s strategy for addressing the issue. GAO analyzed program information and firearms data and met with U.S. and Mexican officials on both sides of the border.
Juarez, Mexico, killings reach new high – CNN.com The number of drug-related killings in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, so far this year has reached 1,647, surpassing the death toll for all of 2008, a city spokesman told CNN.Police gather at the rehab facility where 17 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in early September. A […]
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