BREACHES IN PORT SECURITY SPIKING ON GARCIA'S WATCH

By Juan Montoya
Port of Brownsville administrators are refusing to release the number of breaches in security there and have passed the buck to the commander of the Coast Guard in Corpus Christi.
A public information request for security breach reports for the past year was denied on grounds it was "security sensitive information," by the port administration.
They, in turn, passed on the request to Coast Guard Commander Tony Hahn, for him to determine whether releasing the information would "reveal security vulnerability including the identity of the federal special agent or other federal employee who conducted the investigation or audit."
The information request did not ask for personal identification of the federal personnel, rather, it asked for the number of security breaches:
Our request stated:
"Dear Ms. (Debby) Duke:
I am making a formal information request of all security breach reports reported to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Port of Brownsville Police Dept., the Harbor Master's Office and Michael Davis, the Facility Safety Officer (FSO) for the past 12 months (August 2014 to August 2015). These include security breach reports that are contained in the different port departments' logbooks that do not get filed with the Port Police Dept. I am requesting the dates, department, and the nature of the security breach as well as any corrective actions that resulted." (Click on graphic to enlarge.)
Duke responded:
We have reviewed the documents that are responsive to your request. We believe that these documents fall into the category of Security Sensitive Information, and as such must be submitted to the Captain of the Port (the Commander, U. S. Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi) for approval to be released.
We have submitted these records to the Captain of the Port, and I have attached a copy of the cover letter that was sent with the records.
We will notify you as soon as we receive a response."
The Port of Brownsville Police Dept. is headed by former Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia. In the past, we have received several reports that under his watch there has been a spike in security breaches reported in various departments.
According to one source. "Ever since Garcia has been in charge of the port's police department the port has has already several breach of securities not to mention Coast Guard fines for two breaches of security.Some were not even reported due to the fact that some of his own police officers were the cause of those breaches. But as usual evidence were covered up and instead of firing the officers he suspended them without pay but not before giving them the opportunity of making up some hours with overtime...

"Complaints are ignored specially if Human Resource Director Jaime Martinez owes Chief Garcia a favor for covering a breach in which Mr. Martinez's brother was involved and the Garcia covered for him. Since Garcia has been in charge and you will find a lot of problems with those reports specially dates of accidents and the dates of when, where and how they got investigated. And since both Garcia and (Port Director) Campirano have know each other for a while Campirano just looks the other way...Now things are not all good with Garcia and Harbor Master Micheal Davis. It's been said that these two have an issue with each other and both departments can not get along due to Garcia wanting to run things only his way.There has to be something done to stop all this compadrismo."
Safety and security breaches have become an important issue as the port decides to lease land to five new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) on the Ship Channel. The potential for environmental sabotage and vandalism raises the specter of environmental accidents. If security is as lax as our source indicates, that would be reflected in the security breach reports. With the possibility that the export LNG terminals will eventually come to the port, the issue of security takes on major importance.