ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Some members of New Mexico’s law enforcement community this week are attending a Sandia National Laboratories training course that will help them protect the state’s infrastructures from terrorist attacks.
News media are invited to the course’s graduation ceremony on Friday at 11:15 a.m. at the Albuquerque Police Department Training Academy (5412 2nd Street NW). After a 10-minute ceremony, participants and organizers will be available for interviews.
The course teaches state law enforcers to look at buildings and other high profile targets the way a terrorist does — identifying security weaknesses in order to exploit those weaknesses. It then teaches participants how to correct those weaknesses.
The course is being taught by Sandia security experts who specialize in risk assessment methodologies (RAMs). Sandia has developed RAMs for several types of infrastructures — including dams, electrical power transmission systems, water supply and treatment systems, and chemical facilities — that might be attractive as terrorist targets. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Lab has worked with federal, state, and local government agencies and private companies nationwide to have risk assessments conducted at hundreds of locations.
Twenty-seven people are expected to complete the class this Friday. The participants, most at the executive command level (chiefs, deputy chiefs, and their staffs) of their various agencies, represent the Albuquerque Police Department, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, Santa Fe Police Department, Roswell Police Department, New Mexico Department of Corrections, New Mexico National Guard, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The course gives the participants a chance to conduct a risk assessment on an actual high-profile building in the Albuquerque area.
“We hope this course will give members of the law enforcement community skills that are available at the federal level to make New Mexico safer,” says Sandia organizer Gil Baca. “We also want to help create a cadre of people who can work together as interagency teams to conduct RAMs all over the state.”
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major research and development responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.