Don’t look now but someone is watching you on the water

By Meg Olson

The United States Coast Guard is looking for eyes on the water in Point Roberts.

“Nobody knows your backyard like you,” said Dick Halsaver, coordinator of the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s Citizen’s Action Network (CAN) for the northwest region.

Halsaver said the premise of the program was simple: create a network of citizens whose home or work gives them a view of the water, and use them as a human sensor array. “You know what’s normal. Anything that’s a departure from the normal, you call,” Halsaver said. “You can also get a phone call asking you if you’ve seen anything.”

What makes CAN different from the National Response Center (NRS), a national point of contact to report everything from radiation spills to terrorist threats, is that it’s a two-way street.

“We make it like a membership,” Halsaver said, unlike the NRS’s anonymous call-in program. CAN collects location and contact information from members so that they can contact members when they need information from a specific area. “We can call you and say, look out your window and tell us what you see,” Halsaver said. An example of the value of the system, he said, was the recent recovery of a stolen boat, where the coast guard was able to rapidly narrow its search by using the CAN network. “The absence of a sighting can be good information and here the CAN members were instrumental,” he said.

The current push to increase membership in key areas like Blaine, Birch Bay and Point Roberts is part of a joint effort with the U.S. Border Patrol to increase security in these areas. “We asked the border patrol to identify some areas that needed extra emphasis,” Halsaver said. “We know we have vulnerabilities in these areas because it’s so close to Canada.”

Border patrol public affairs officer for the Blaine sector Adan Gonzales acknowledged the border patrol had stepped up patrols in Point Roberts. “In the past few years, Blaine Border Patrol sector has experienced increases in personnel, technology and infrastructure,” he said. “The visible increase in activities in Point Roberts is a result of the aforementioned growth as well as decisions based on intelligence-driven operations.”

Border patrol assistant agent in charge Jason Carroll said the CAN network was an example of how outreach and education could do the job done by high-tech cameras and sensors in other locations. “Our cameras have personalities,” he said.

For information about CAN and whether you would be a good fit for the program call U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary flotilla commander Drew West at 360/303-8047 or staff officer in charge of public education Randall Kall at 360/332-2222.

Recent outreach efforts have boosted CAN numbers in Blaine and Birch Bay over ten and the hope is there will be a similar response from the Point.