Requests from feds strain Marine Patrol Agency equipment, staffing insufficient

AUGUSTA – Maine’s Marine Patrol has been pressed into service to help provide port security by federal agencies, but it is not getting paid for that help and is plagued by equipment and manpower shortages.

“Since September 11th [2001], we have been getting requests every day, not once a week or once a month, [but] every day,” Maj. John Fetterman, deputy chief of the Marine Patrol, said this week. “Unlike conventional law enforcement, we have no backup. There is no other agency in the state that can go to sea.”

Fetterman said the 52 Marine Patrol officers were hard-pressed to meet all of their law enforcement duties concerning state fisheries laws before the homeland security duties were added to their responsibilities. He said when Marine Patrol officers provide coverage for the Coast Guard, there are no federal funds to reimburse them for that additional expense.

“The Coast Guard has fewer assets in Maine than they did before 9-11,” he said. “In fact, we have more boats in the water now than they do.”

A common request from the Coast Guard, he said, is to provide security in a port or to escort a ferry into harbor during elevated threat conditions. Fetterman said that at times the requests outstrip the ability of the Marine Patrol to fill and it must “borrow” personnel from other agencies.

“We provide a boat handler for the boat and then have a local police officer or a game warden from Fish and Wildlife on board,” he said, “but they do not have the equipment or training to really operate at sea.”

Fetterman said there are also equipment issues. He said Marine Patrol craft lack computer access that many law enforcement officers have in their patrol cars, and they lack secure radio communications with the Coast Guard that are needed when dealing with a suspicious vessel.

“This is a very serious problem,” U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said in an interview. “There has to be a communications system that works. I personally saw the communications problems the Coast Guard was having in the gulf region with Hurricane Katrina, and this has to be resolved.”

Snowe sent a letter Thursday to the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thomas Collins, asking what plans the agency has to resolve communication problems with local agencies such as the Maine Marine Patrol.

“Please provide me and my staff with information on the Coast Guard’s strategy for improving secure communications interoperability, especially for unplanned emergency and catastrophic events, with the Maine Marine Patrol,” Snowe wrote. “Given the urgency of this issue, I appreciate your efforts to complete this undertaking as soon as possible.”

But the problems facing the Marine Patrol involve more than communications, said Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, co-chairman of the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee.

“We are talking another unfunded mandate,” he said. “The Marine Patrol is providing homeland security missions, but not being reimbursed what they cost.”

Damon said the Marine Patrol is charged with enforcing state fisheries laws, but has been diverted to other missions since 9-11. He said while it is obvious the state law enforcement functions have suffered because of the security missions, no one has studied the scope of the loss.

Some commercial fishermen have even suggested that their license fees be increased to help bolster enforcement, Damon said. “And instead we have the patrol shifted to these other missions,” he added.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, agreed state and local agencies should be reimbursed when they are asked by federal agencies to do security missions.

“I think we should be providing some measure of financial assistance when the state is performing duties at the request of the Coast Guard,” she said. “The problem is the Coast Guard itself is so underfunded as well.”

Collins is sponsoring a port security measure that would provide $400 million over five years. She said the legislation will be considered in 2006, but that any funds would not be available until the federal budget year that begins Oct. 1, 2006.

Damon said the Marine Patrol has been “chronically underfunded” by the state and can ill afford to pay for federal missions. He said the agency has been hit with budget cuts and is facing likely further cuts next year.