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What do GPO, FEMA, NIH, USDA, TVA and a few other federal agencies have in common?

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  • DougC

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    Besides being the government here to help citizens (note: BIG loud snarky sound just now) they are some 73 federal agencies that have full-time LEOs; armed and can make arrests.

    While reading a mystery thriller the lead character gets a federal carry license I wondered just who can be armed as fed beside the usual FBI, Capitol Police, CBP, Customs, LEOs. Surprised to see Dept of Education, FDA, NIH and a few others. Who are they arresting?
    Texas SOT
     
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    benenglish

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    Who are they arresting?
    IME, small(er) agency LEOs rarely make arrests and when they do they are always accompanied by other LEOs whose jobs require arresting people every day.

    The reason folks like the Railroad Retirement Board have full-time LEOs is that the laws they enforce are so specialized that no LEOs from any other agency could possibly be sufficiently trained to identify when those laws are broken, much less be able to competently testify in court during trials.

    Like it or not, when criminals are on trial, "the system" demands that a real, sworn, badge- and gun-carrying LEO is going to have to be the arresting officer of record and must be able to testify knowledgeably about the alleged infraction. Where arcane federal laws are being broken, that sort of expertise only exists in the person of full-time LEOs trained and employed by the overseeing agency.

    I ran head first into this state of affairs many years ago when I was doing data recovery and lead development on cases involving obscenity. I was completely capable of testifying in court about all technical aspects of these cases. However, I was completely shut out of helping and was told, quite bluntly, "If you don't carry a badge and a gun, no one will believe you strongly enough in court to send someone to prison."

    It was a bit frustrating to see cops who could barely use Outlook to read their email being "trained" (and I use that term very loosely) to testify in court about how data was recovered from seized digital media. In the intervening decades, things have greatly improved. However, when digital evidence was a new thing, much of the testimony of LEOs about it boiled down to "I wear a badge so just believe everything I tell you". At the time, defense attorneys tended to be so unsophisticated on the subjects involved that they took those LEOs at their word. So did juries.

    Thank goodness things are better now.

    The bottom line about your original question, though, is that when the law is obscure, you need a few obscure LEOs to specialize in it or else it can't practically be enforced.
     

    toddnjoyce

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    IMO, all the post stander/uniform police guarding buildings and such need to be rolled into one fed agency like FPS or Homeland Security. The specialty folks like RR police should be special agents.

    There’d be some bugs to work out but nothing would be too hard.
     

    benenglish

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    IMO, all the post stander/uniform police guarding buildings and such need to be rolled into one fed agency like FPS or Homeland Security.
    Agreed but I was under the impression that this was already the case. Most of the federal buildings I know are protected by the FPS backing up private security companies. That changes in DC at buildings that routinely house politicians eligible for Secret Service protection; those places get SS uniformed division security.

    Where federal offices are housed in mostly private sector buildings, I'm under the impression that those are either guarded by private security contractors or the federal office is non-public, unlisted, unacknowledged.

    The specialty folks like RR police should be special agents.

    RRB LEOs are already GS-1811 Special Agents. (ETA since I have some experience with the RRB. You know how ATF agents are generally thought of as guys who weren't good enough for the FBI? Well, from personal experience, I'd say the RRB is the next lower rung on the competency ladder. The last RRB office I dealt with was headed by a burned-out former FBI SA with anger issues and a god complex. His staff were various washouts from the FBI, ATF, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a couple of other obscure agencies.) I think that's the case in most agencies. I know of very few feds who carry a gun that aren't 1811 SAs. In fact, the only ones I know of are a few GS-1810 Special Officers who do really weird work, like communications support and driving high-value-target vehicles.

    I'm sure I'm just ignorant; there are a million jobs out there that I've never heard of. Does anybody know of any feds with arrest authority who are not GS-1811s, either Special Agents or Inspectors?
     
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    toddnjoyce

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    …I'm sure I'm just ignorant; there are a million jobs out there that I've never heard of. Does anybody know of any feds with arrest authority who are not GS-1811s, either Special Agents or Inspectors?
    GS-1801 Investigators such as USSS Technical LEOs come to kind.

    The Hoover Dam Police under Bureau of Reclamation dissolved, but I don’t think they were 1811s, either.
     

    benenglish

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    GS-1801 Investigators such as USSS Technical LEOs come to kind.
    Good point. 1801s do all kinds of tech work to make cases. Good 1811s appreciate them. But even if their job title is Technical Law Enforcement Officer, does that mean they have arrest authority?

    As for the Hoover Dam Police, I didn't realize they stuck around so long. By the time their job was taken by the Park Service in 2017, I would have thought almost all feds with arrest authority would have been transitioned to an 1811 job description.

    Learn something new every day. Thanks.
     

    DougC

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    IME, small(er) agency LEOs rarely make arrests and when they do they are always accompanied by other LEOs whose jobs require arresting people every day.

    The reason folks like the Railroad Retirement Board have full-time LEOs is that the laws they enforce are so specialized that no LEOs from any other agency could possibly be sufficiently trained to identify when those laws are broken, much less be able to competently testify in court during trials.

    Like it or not, when criminals are on trial, "the system" demands that a real, sworn, badge- and gun-carrying LEO is going to have to be the arresting officer of record and must be able to testify knowledgeably about the alleged infraction. Where arcane federal laws are being broken, that sort of expertise only exists in the person of full-time LEOs trained and employed by the overseeing agency.

    I ran head first into this state of affairs many years ago when I was doing data recovery and lead development on cases involving obscenity. I was completely capable of testifying in court about all technical aspects of these cases. However, I was completely shut out of helping and was told, quite bluntly, "If you don't carry a badge and a gun, no one will believe you strongly enough in court to send someone to prison."

    It was a bit frustrating to see cops who could barely use Outlook to read their email being "trained" (and I use that term very loosely) to testify in court about how data was recovered from seized digital media. In the intervening decades, things have greatly improved. However, when digital evidence was a new thing, much of the testimony of LEOs about it boiled down to "I wear a badge so just believe everything I tell you". At the time, defense attorneys tended to be so unsophisticated on the subjects involved that they took those LEOs at their word. So did juries.

    Thank goodness things are better now.

    The bottom line about your original question, though, is that when the law is obscure, you need a few obscure LEOs to specialize in it or else it can't practically be enforced.
    Thanks for the insight in the ways of LEO and subject matter expert LEOs.
     

    toddnjoyce

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    Good point. 1801s do all kinds of tech work to make cases. Good 1811s appreciate them. But even if their job title is Technical Law Enforcement Officer, does that mean they have arrest authority?

    As for the Hoover Dam Police, I didn't realize they stuck around so long. By the time their job was taken by the Park Service in 2017, I would have thought almost all feds with arrest authority would have been transitioned to an 1811 job description.

    Learn something new every day. Thanks.

    All USSS TLE 1801s have arrest authority. In the OPM classification directory, it does list arrest authority as part of the job elements for all 1801
     

    benenglish

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    In the OPM classification directory, it does list arrest authority as part of the job elements for all 1801
    That's news to me. I've been gone for a decade so things may have changed but in my agency, 1801s had no badge, no gun, no arrest authority. Occasionally one would complain that the 1811s treated them like glorified secretaries. The good ones didn't, of course, but there are always a few 1811s in every office who are jerks.
     
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