Guest columnOne answer to the National Drug Threat Assessment Report: It’s the human component, stupid // by Lee Maril
The recent Department of Justice study of the impacts of illegal drugs upon our country, the National Drug Threat Assessment 2011 (NDTA2011), outlines significant challenges facing Customs and Border Patrol (CBP); a first step to directly addressing the NDTA2011 is to refrain from sending out a new batch of RFPs (request for proposal) to the usual defense contractors
Dr. Lee Maril of East Carolina University // Source: ecu.edu
The recent Department of Justice study of the impacts of illegal drugs upon our country, the National Drug Threat Assessment 2011 (NDTA2011), outlines significant challenges facing Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Illegal drug trafficking, according to NDTA2011, poses a “dynamic threat to the United States” because the transnational criminal organizations, “continue to alter patterns in drug production, trafficking, and abuse” which include, “modifying their interrelationships, altering drug production levels, and adjusting their trafficking routes and methods.”
At the same time our U.S. Congress looks for ways to reduce the national debt and escape the claws of the Great Recession, illegal drugs are costing us a whopping $193 billion a year in crime related expenses, job performance, and health care. The majority of these drugs are crossed from Mexico into the United States by way of our southwest border.
Recent history suggests that a silver bullet solution is an unsatisfactory answer to the challenges posed by Mexican drug traffickers. It is vital to remember that in 1998 L-3 Communications received more than $250 million to construct an integrated computer system along the Mexican border. Seven years later Boeing, Inc., was awarded more than $1 billion to become “Systems Integrator” of a similar high tech solution to border security that would, once and for all, “seal” the Mexican border. Both of these high-tech solutions by major defense contractors failed miserably in not only wasting tax dollars, but also failing to protect public safety. It is a blatant fallacy that technology alone can always save the day.
What we face instead are not just technological challenges, but human challenges.
Now that Secretary Napolitano has stated that a “one-size-fits-all” high tech border solution has proven over the last decade to be without merit, isn’t it finally time to consider other available choices and options? A case in point is a closer examination of the U.S. Border Patrol. Since the events of 9/11, the Border Patrol has grown from 4,000 agents to more than 21,000. This remarkable growth, which makes the Border Patrol the largest federal law enforcement agency in the land, has not been without cost in terms of quality, efficiency, and integrity.
Consider these facts: to become a Border Patrol agent all that you require is a high school diploma and less than sixty days of training at the BP academy in New Mexico. Two months at the academy, compared to the previous five and one-half month requirement,
