This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 9, 2011 - It might be better to be safe than sorry, but when it comes to homeland security, following that advice can be expensive.
Take, for instance, rubber overshoes purchased for the St. Louis Police Department in case of a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive emergency. At nearly $11 each, a complement of 1,600 cost more than $17,000.
That's just one of hundreds of line items reviewed by the St. Louis Beacon and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting as part of their examination of homeland security spending in Missouri in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The bulk of the spending came through the main federal programs that allocate homeland security funding to the states, including the Urban Areas Security Initiative, State Homeland Security Program, and the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program. Those three programs comprise about 60 percent of the roughly $570 million in federal homeland security funds that came to Missouri between 2002 and last year.
As the Beacon and MCIR have previously reported, the regional agencies in St. Louis and Kansas City have focused extensively on improving the ability of first-responder agencies to communicate with one another in emergencies.
Indeed, a single expenditure for a radio controller system constituted nearly two-thirds of the $3.6 million in equipment spending included in the St. Louis spending data provided by the state Office of Homeland Security.
But even with the large investment in interoperability, millions of dollars have remained for the purchase of items big and small.
St. Louis, for instance, spent about $5,000 for pens, crates, kennels and leashes to round up household pets. The reason is simple, said Gary Christmann, St. Louis emergency management commissioner. Emergency officials, he said, "have found that people don't want to leave their homes unless their pets are being taken care of." The federal government mandated pet-rescue readiness after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, Christmann said.
Emergency response officials in Kansas City and St. Louis said they spend homeland security money with multiple emergencies in mind, be it a terrorist attack, tornado or even a crash at an air show.
For example, one of three foam-spraying fire trucks purchased in Kansas City with urban security funds responded on Aug. 20 when a pilot died after his plane nosedived into the runway at a Kansas City airport, said Erin Lynch, who directs the region's emergency services and homeland security program.
She said that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has loosened up its rules on allowing expenditures for equipment that can be used in events other than terrorist attacks. Katrina opened the department's eyes to the idea that these resources should be available for other sorts of disasters, she said.
However, Lynch added, "It's a constant balance between how much do you invest in based on the risk, and it's very subjective."
Mike Sherry is the executive director of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting in Kansas City.