New York National Guard Policing Streets And Using Gamma Ray Scaning Machines

New York National Guard Policing Streets And Using Gamma Ray Scaning Machines

The New York National Guard has been a part of missions across the world, but they also have a very important one right here at home.

Its to keep drugs off of local streets, their technology and training is free to local police departments and agencies, no one has been turned away.

Dust and desert are the images most equate with the New York National Guard, on the front lines in the middle east, fighting the war on terror.

These images are pictures of another fight, a fight here at home.

Col. Alden Saddlemire says, "our people are committed to fight. Its a domestic fight they firmly believe in."

The NY National Guard's Counterdrug task force, providing not only the people, but the equipment law enforcement may need to make drug arrests, seizures.

SSG. Brian Gillis says, "we can go on the scene and sniff or take a swab with this and it can tell you what it is."

Using ionization, counterdrug's machines can detect chemicals, explosives, narcotics on money, weapons, even fabric. A simple swab can tell you if that surface had contact with those substances.

A simple sweep of an undercarriage or a scan of a car can help find drugs or weapons being brought into the capital region. While the undervehicle inspection system looks for traps or voids where anything could be taped or bolted in, the mobile vehicle inspection system takes it one step further.

Gillis says, "its basically an x-ray. If you zoom in you can see the rifle laid across the bottom."

With a warrant, a department can request a scan. Then, with the swing of an arm, gamma rays outline the car and its skeleton.

Read the full article here along with short video clip from FOX news(yes I know I hate Fox just as much as you but I wanted to share this)

So basically we're using our tax dollars to pull people over and [with a warrant] 'x-ray' cars for drugs and weapons. However, in the short video clip from Fox News, they seemed to focus on marijuana the whole time. They talked about a guy who smelled like pot so they took his car and found nothing whatsoever. Great way to be spending our Nation Guard resources & money, don't you think?

Seriously, instead of using this technology here, these people should be deployed to go help look for bombs. Now I don't want more of our men getting shipped off to Iraq to die, but I mean bombs are everywhere, we don't have to be wasting this money and technology here do we?

Oh wait, I forgot there was the whole "New York bomber" recently... hmm does this have anything to do with that?

Explosive Ordnance Disposal is a separate area of the military, and its own MOS/Rate (whatever the respective branch calls your area of training and employment).

The other thing is that the National Guard is run by the respective state it is part of. It is a separate military institution paid for and governed by the state. The National Guard often operates jointly (and is trained jointly) with federal military forces, but the New York National Guard cannot, of their own volition, deploy to any foreign nation without authorization from the National Government (because they are in charge of foreign relations... one of the primary and original purposes of the national government). I believe they can deploy to another state, but only if authorized/invited by another state - but don't quote me on that one, it may have to go through the national level.

That said - I would not mind going IA (Individual Augmentee) for an assignment on the southern border as a reservist. I'm qualified with the standard M-16 and M-9 (and can easily qualify with just about anything else), and have nothing holding me down to this spot. I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I'm better at it than Korean (where I currently go for two weeks out of the year). And, point-blank, I'm not going to do anything related to my rate in the reserves (they keep decommissioning squadrons, and I'm an I-level tech, anyway) - may as well make some use of my young legs and sharp eyes while I still have them.

As a New Yorker, and active duty military member (who conducts law enforcement operations with other various L/E agencies on a near daily basis), I have no objections to this what so ever. It accomplishes a number of things...

1)Provides real life training, and experience for the National Guardsmen involved. Those who work in Law Enforcement will tell you that training and experience stand for ALOT.

2)It assists local law enforcement agencies. Developing strong partnerships with local or federal agencies opens up the doors to a lot of resources your department, or organization may not have.

I'm not sure how much funding Schenectady Police Department gets, but the use of the National Guards equipment/resources (as opposed to buying their own) definitely saves them a large sum of money. I'm sure the scanning equipment isn't cheap.

3)NUMBERS TALK. It's the truth... the best way for an agency, department, or unit to get funding is to SHOW they serve a purpose! This is accomplished through records, and reports. The unit definitely, without a doubt in my mind, logs how many agencies they've assisted, and how many cases have been prosecuted as a result of their assistance. These records/reports go up the chain, and come back down as increased budget numbers, or the same budget numbers as last fiscal year. The goal is to keep that budget from going DOWN.

I'm all for it.

-microcosm

Also... I feel your title needs addressing... it is very misleading.

Let's call it what it is, the NY National Guard is assisting a local police agency. This happens daily in other states all over the country.

They have not relieved the local police departments of their duties, nor are they actively patrolling the streets looking for violations of the law. To say they are "policing the streets" implies something very very different.

[edit on 7/8/10 by microcosm]

I have to agree, here.

I am all for the National Guard (and, heck, even the Reserves) being more active supporting local law enforcement and the populations they took an oath to protect and serve.

You can agree or disagree with the policy on drugs (which is what I sense this is about, more than anything else) - but 'we' don't make the policy; to quote Top Gun: "We do not make policy, here, gentlemen. Politicians - Civilians, do that. We are the instruments of that policy."

I think they are methods used to track potential terrorist activities. They know something is close.
2nd

I don't like where this is going.

*Actually I don't have problem with it. Soldiers should be used more. There aren't enough soldiers on our streets, we need more of them.

The constitution is old and useless, let's suspect people of terrorism and then torture them.

I love America. Somebody search me quick, I don't feel safe unless I'm being searched frequently.

The constitution is old and useless, let's suspect people of terrorism and then torture them.

I am not saying I agree with every policy ever made by our government - however, I fail to see how placing more uniformed service individuals on the streets to proactively counteract criminal (and terrorist) activities is the same thing as locking them up in Gitmo.

I would rather have a guy posted on the street corner watching out for crazy happenings and being trained to respond to them, as opposed to an agency that goes around trying to find evidence of citizens being guilty of the intent to commit a crime or act.

I can see the guard and see that he's human, has a family in the area, actually cares about protecting people from harm. The other one is out to get people and takes the posture of "you're guilty... I just don't know how to prove it, yet." - even if there is not necessarily a precedent to suggest you are guilty of intent.

Whether you recognize it or not, there is a very real threat out there. Our governments DO have a responsibility to address that threat. There are several ways they can go about it - having boots on ground is usually more effective and less intrusive than having the secret police or something.