PORT COP GARCIA TELLS HERALD HIS JOB IS "PAPITA"

By Juan Montoya

We don' know whether to laugh or cry after having read the self-serving feature/BJ that the local daily published on Port Police Chief Carlos Garcia.

The chief, who transferred from the Brownsville PD where he oversaw more than 200 sworn officers to command a nine-person force to patrol 40,000 acres of port property.

In fact, there are only 3,000 of those acres actually developed, so the "force" apparently is concerned with keeping an eye on the cows and horses being grown by lessees on port-owned grazing lands.

Garcia waxed that he force is trying "to utilize technology to its fullest potential" but forgot to add that the technology was already on order from the previous department administration's grant applications to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In fact, all the acquisitions that he mentions in the article were the results of pending grant applications that Garcia had nothing to do with.

Radios, computers, onboard computers for cars, and data-sharing capabilities were already on line through grant applications filled out years before he came on board. If one is to give credit where credit is due – and despite all his shortcomings – former port chief George Gavito initiated most of them, including the video surveillance cameras now touted by Garcia.

“We use video cameras to monitor the port and certain docks because we just physically can’t be everywhere,” Garcia told the daily.

 In fact, this veteran police officer could not even handle the investigation of a simple drowning accident in July when five people drowned after a vehicle was accidentally driven into the Shrimp Basin and had to call in the Brownsville PD and the Cameron County Sheriff's Department to handle it.

Instead, the port cops concentrate on the really important stuff like scrap metal pilferage and directing disoriented undocumented immigrants north.

Garcia said as much when he told the reporter that if someone is trying to move drugs across the ship channel or when people who are immigrating illegally show up on port property, federal law enforcement agencies get involved and generally take the lead on investigations.

“We have to have the partnerships. We can’t do it by ourselves,” he said.
In fact, if the feds handle the drug interdiction and illegal migration, the BPD and the Sheriff's Department handle stuff like drownings and other fatalities, just what does Garcia – pulling in more than $100,000 in salary – actually do?
Garcia told the daily that he’s "excited about the port police and proud of his officers who are learning and growing into their role at the Port of Brownsville."

With a salary like his and with nothing else to do but nab underpaid employees at the shipwrecking companies from filching a  bit of copper for beer money, who wouldn't be?