By Daniel Fowler, CQ Staff

The Department of Homeland Security is considering the feasibility of creating law enforcement deployment teams that could be immediately sent to assist communities during disasters.

The agency’s senior law enforcement adviser said the goal is to have a draft report on the proposal completed sometime this year.

Having the teams in place would help expedite the process of deploying law enforcement assistance during disasters, said Rick Dinse, the FEMA official.

“In the after actions from [Hurricane] Katrina, it became very clear that there was a missing piece in the overall response structure of the country,” said Richard Cashdollar, a senior adviser to the Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization of police chiefs from around the country.

“Fire and rescue had Urban Search and Rescue. The medical community responded through . . . Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, and there was no equivalent team for law enforcement that could pull together really existing assets and move law enforcement across state lines and do the same thing that USAR and DMAT did,” he said.

DHS, FEMA, the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association are working on the initiative, and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff mentioned it during his remarks to the National Congress for Secure Communities last month.

“We’re looking to support an expansion of the EMAC concept — Emergency Compact concept — that would allow state and local law enforcement — basically, a pre-arranged deployment — to assist,” he said. “We have . . . this concept under things like our Urban Search and Rescue teams. The idea would be to extend it to the law enforcement community as well.”

The Web site for the Emergency Management Assistance Compact says it is administered by the National Emergency Management Association and “offers a responsive and straightforward system for states to send personnel and equipment to help disaster relief efforts in other states.” With the EMAC system already in place, creating the teams using EMAC as a foundation makes the most sense, Dinse said.

“How it’s currently done now is you’d get the request [for assistance] and they would seek resources within the receiving state that would match what the asking state is looking for and then send them,” Dinse said.

“This process would formalize it to the point where we’d have . . . people pre-identified, pre-trained, pre-prepared to respond as groups,” he said.

‘Organize, Train, Equip and Deploy’

A proposal from the Major Cities Chiefs Association calls for 10 regional teams across the country, with up to 500 law enforcement officers, who could deploy fully self-supported for two weeks.

The law enforcement personnel would come from agencies in the various regions and would be formed around a major sheriff’s department or police department.

“The reason for that is big agencies, the super agencies, have the administrative depth to be able to properly administer these programs — to do the training, do the logistical support and all that,” Cashdollar said.

Under the plan, the federal government would pay for some equipment and training for the teams and members would receive credentials to ensure they meet a certain level of proficiency, said Tom Frazier, the Chiefs Association’s executive director.

“It’s a systematic way to organize, train, equip and deploy the law enforcement resources so that you don’t really need to send the 82nd Airborne in,” Frazier said.

Dinse said FEMA is working on a draft report that will articulate what it wants to happen.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be exactly the way [the chiefs group] proposed it, but it certainly is going to look very closely like what they proposed, I’m sure,” he said. “But there undoubtedly will be some nuances to it that weren’t maybe in their initial proposal or may have to be added.”

Daniel Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.