“Our end goal is to create more agents,” said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.
IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor. The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.
“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.
It is all quite a step up from the square knot.
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters. The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.
“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.” Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.
“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”
Oh Brother…..does anyone else see a problem here? Here’s a hint…the terrorist in this scenario is a disgruntled Iraq War Vet.
AND,
what do you do, with a bunch of KIDS and parents that have NEVER gone out camping and are MORE scared of TREES/bears/anything WILD. then the cop around the corner.
Obama Jugend!!!
California has MANY Explorer programs that are aimed at training towards a career in law enforcement. Non-story.
A Dick Cheney dream come true. As a coward who never had the balls to be in the real military, he sure knows what they need to make them better.
Didn’t Hitler have a junior Nazi corp or something like this.
lets not forget people, these people are not the BSA…