Emergency Responders Accept Federal Powers to Avoid Jurisdiction Issues
The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
Thirty-five police officers and sheriff’s deputies crowded into a federal courtroom in Charlotte Monday to be deputized as federal marshals in the war on terrorism.
In a two-minute ceremony, Gregory Forest, U.S. marshal for the western district of North Carolina, administered an oath to 26 Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers and nine Mecklenburg County sheriff’s deputies.
All are members of the county’s Advanced Local Emergency Response Team (ALERT), which was initiated in 1997 and became operational in 2001, just as attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon highlighted the need for domestic preparedness.
Forest noted that Mecklenburg County borders South Carolina and that Charlotte has a pair of nuclear power plants in close proximity -- the McGuire plant on Lake Norman, north of the city, and the Catawba facility on South Carolina’s Lake Wylie.
“Should something happen, this would keep folks from having to stop at the state line,” he said. “It leaves no boundaries.”
The ALERT team is believed to be the first terrorism response team in the nation to be granted federal jurisdiction under the authority of the U.S. marshal.
The deputization is limited to ALERT call-outs only, Forest noted before administering the oath to the officers, who were dressed in the navy blue uniforms of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police and the green-and-khaki of the Mecklenburg Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s actually kind of an honor to do this,” said Officer John Melekian, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg SWAT team member. Melekian said deputizing ALERT officers shows Charlotte continues to think ahead about terrorism preparedness.
“We were nationally a step ahead of everyone else in knowing that this could happen in the United States,” he said.
ALERT members gather for monthly training sessions that simulate possible terrorism scenarios. In a high-profile exercise last fall, the team staged a mock assassination and nerve-gas attack at Ericsson Stadium in downtown Charlotte.
The program has received some congressional funding and was praised by Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge during an August visit to Charlotte.
Forest’s mother, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., also attended Monday’s ceremony.
Giving the local officers federal jurisdiction during an emergency solves a potential problem in advance, she said.
“We don’t get in the last-minute bind of saying, `Something happened and, oh my God, who’s got jurisdiction?’ ” Myrick said. “We can’t be too lax in anything we do. We’ve got to be on guard.”