Coast Guard Forms Unit to Protect Area Seaports

Retired from the U.S. Coast Guard for a decade, Mike Dobbins had worked as a police officer and even started a charter boat company in Old Harbor, Alaska.

Then came Sept. 11.

“I was on the phone [with the Coast Guard] in Washington, D.C. that day,” Dobbins recalled. “I made it known that all they had to do was ask, and I’d come back.”

They asked, and Dobbins, 48, returned to join the Coast Guard’s Maritime Safety and Security Team, which was commissioned in a ceremony Sunday at its home base in San Pedro.

The 104-member unit will undertake a variety of tasks to ensure port security. Among them will be boarding suspicious vessels and escorting cruise ships, which are considered potential terrorist targets.

The security team also will patrol the harbor during ceremonial events, such as those for visiting tall ships or when Navy ships dock.

The San Pedro group is the third security team the Coast Guard has commissioned this year, following one in Norfolk, Va., and another in Seattle. Plans call for a fourth based in Houston and a total of 12 within the next three years, said Chief Warrant Officer R. Lance Jones.

The San Pedro team has eight 25-foot boats that can travel 50 mph. Each has an M-60 rifle mounted on it.

Although it is based in Southern California, the unit can be moved quickly throughout areas along the West Coast. The boats are small enough that they can be loaded on C-130 cargo planes.

Not to mistake the mission, the Coast Guard identifies the units with the number 911. Because it is the third team, San Pedro is known as 91103.

Training for the new team began in June, said Lt. Cmdr. Keith M. Smith, the unit’s commanding officer. The group recently completed a month of training with the Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

At the commissioning ceremony, Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta called the team a “nimble, elite force.”

The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Transportation, but it will be moved to the Homeland Security Agency, if Congress passes legislation to create the cabinet-level organization and the president signs it into law.

As Mineta and others spoke, the Los Angeles Channel behind them was busy with giant cargo ships, tugboats and sailboats.

The Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor is the busiest in the nation. More than 4 million cargo containers and 500,000 cruise ship passengers pass through it annually.

“It must be protected at all costs,” Mineta said.

Earlier in the day, the secretary spoke to the National Guard Assn. of the United States conference in Long Beach, praising new security measures imposed after the terrorist attacks.