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thedrifter
09-27-05, 09:07 PM
October 03, 2005
The changing of the guards
Civilians to replace MPs at gates
By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

The Marine gate guard, with his squared-away duty belt and impeccable uniform — an enduring outward symbol of Marine bases worldwide — will soon be a thing of the past.

Within two years, the Corps plans to replace all of its military police now manning the gates with contract security guards or federal police officers.

The move has been years in the making, though senior Marine officials only recently were able to lock down the details and push the program past a military police community reluctant to yield one of its key duties.

But with counterinsurgency operations continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps’ MP units are stretched thin, forcing officials to look for options to free them up for overseas deployments. The move will make an additional 1,100 MPs available for missions in support of the war on terrorism.

“The [military police] mission is too big for the numbers that we have,” said Jan Durham, deputy security director with the Plans, Policies and Operations section at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington.

Taking MPs off the gates for duty in the operating forces leaves a gap that needs to be filled by civilian guards, Durham said.

Durham stressed that the new civilian security guards will be carefully vetted and will be required to maintain high physical, technical and security standards.

Within the next two months, the Corps will replace its military gate guards at three bases — Blount Island Command in Jacksonville, Fla.; Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Ga.; and MCLB Barstow, Calif. — with 217 federal police guards. The guards are in the midst of a training program taught by a private contractor, Durham said, noting that the program conforms to Marine Corps standards.

Starting next spring, the Corps will begin replacing MP gate guards at the rest of its bases with contracted security guards, starting with East Coast bases. The guards will be locally contracted by installation security officials in hopes of drawing candidates who more closely represent the community and may be more likely to have prior military service, Durham said.

The contractor guards will be trained to Marine standards in the use of the M9 Beretta pistol and 12-gauge shotgun and will learn unarmed self-defense. Training will be conducted by a still-undetermined contractor.

The civilianization of the Marine gate guards will cost about $100 million per year, Durham said.

“To train a police officer or a contract security guard isn’t rocket science,” said Durham, who spent more than 30 years in the Corps as a military police officer. “To do it well is a challenging proposition because you just can’t have a boilerplate training or cookie-cutter approach.”

The new contractors will be restricted to guard duty only, manning posts at base entrances and patrolling the perimeter of Marine air stations. They will not be allowed to arrest Marines or perform any law enforcement functions, Durham said, but they will be authorized to detain Marines in certain cases.

“If that contractor smelled alcohol on your breath … that contractor, as an example, could detain you temporarily … and radio for an MP,” Durham said.

Some in the Corps resisted the notion of privatizing gate-guard duty, but conversations with Army officials who had done the same thing at their bases helped alleviate concerns, he said.

“My feeling was all along that I would much rather have an MP out there, both from the perspective of capability … and public image,” Durham said.

“Are we going to lose some of that image? Of course we are. But can we make up for that by virtue of sharp-looking, well-trained, well-employed security guards working alongside MPs? I think we will.”

Ellie