Page 69 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2022

According to Lt. Jay Jayaraman, NCBC Gulfport staff judge advocate, mutual aid agreements serve as agreements of principle between the U.S. Navy and another party, usually a federal, state, or local government entity, to work together under certain defined conditions. Quite often, these conditions involve overlapping areas of interest, such as emergency services, law enforcement or firefighting efforts.
“We can both provide that support to outside entities in a limited capacity and receive support from outside entities as well,” said Jayaraman. “Mutual aid agreements are very effective and useful vehicles for establishing methods and manners of responding to relatively common types of issues.”
In the case of NCBC Gulfport, some of the main mutual
aid agreements the base has set up are with the Gulfport Fire Department, Gulfport Police Department, and the Pascagoula Emergency Management Services.
“For the Lakeside Barracks in Pascagoula, the City of Pascagoula can dispatch patrols there as necessary and can work jointly with our security if there are any incidents they may encounter,” said Jayaraman.
Most notably for the base security force and local law enforcement, Navy Masters-at-Arms and civilian security force do participate in training exercises together, said Lt. Mark Schlom, NCBC Gulfport security director. This breeds familiarization not only with how the various security force and law enforcement organizations operate, but can also help personnel from these different entities develop good working relationships with their peers both on and off base.
“We do have good working relationships with our local partners. We are able to train together during our annual exercises and drills that we have come up, which are all in preparation for either disaster preparedness or critical incident responses,” said Schlom. “It’s all about interoperability, from our standpoint, between different jurisdiction levels, and it helps us all train together with the different tactics we’re able to utilize to manage various incidents that we might encounter.”
There are some legal limitations as to what types of assistance military organizations can provide local government entities. For example, while local law enforcement can be allowed to help respond to security or emergency incidents on base, Navy security personnel are not allowed to patrol with local law enforcement or make arrests outside the base fence line. All mutual aid agreements are reviewed to ensure compliance with all applicable laws.
Base security forces and local law enforcement participate in training exercises together.
In the case of firefighting, however, local fire departments with which the base has mutual aid agreements can send firefighters to train alongside their Navy counterparts, and come to the assistance of Navy firefighters if the base ever needs extra hands. Likewise, the base firefighters can also respond to fires off base, depending on where they are located, said NCBC fire department chief Christopher Gerwick.
Base firefighters got to take part in a real-world example of this kind of cooperation just over two years ago. In April 2020, three firefighters from NCBC Gulfport took one of the base firetrucks off base to help fight the brush fire that took place in the woods near 28th Street and Canal Road, just northwest of the Seabee base. They helped Harrison County firefighters keep the blaze from spreading toward some of the homes in a neighborhood located just northwest of 28th Street.
“It gave us the experience to do something that we normally don’t get access to on base,” said Jerry Williams, one of the NCBC firefighters who responded to the brush fire along with Andrew Braman and Chief Tony Cothern. “It’s great getting to interact with other outside firefighters. They’re one of our mutual aid partners for the base, so to be able to go out and perform with them gives us the ability to get to know them and see how they work.”
Overall, mutual aid agreements and other formal arrangements not only allow the military and local government entities to provide each other with assistance in times of need, but they serve to strengthen ties between the base and the local community.
“It’s a good way for us to be able to work alongside our counterparts, and it enables us as a base to be able to give back to the community,” said Gerwick.
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