By David Garrick6:45 p.m.Sept. 4, 2013
utsandiego.com


A radar device has been installed at Ponto Beach in south Carlsbad to help crack down on drug and immigrant smuggling. Hayne Palmour IV

CARLSBAD — A large radar device recently installed at Carlsbad’s Ponto Beach is part of a federal crackdown on drug and immigrant smuggling along the California coast.

The device, which can track any vessel within 20 miles, could help law enforcement agencies spot and apprehend smuggling boats or terrorists before they get to shore. It is the first of its kind in the country.

Federal officials have begun to focus more on securing the coastline after sharply reducing smuggling by air during the past 25 years, said Keith Jones of the Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, which is run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“We have a very good handle on the air game and now we’re trying to respond to this new threat,” said Jones, noting that smuggling along the coast has been on the rise. “We’re targeting small vessels, which have been challenging for us.”

That’s where the Ponto Beach radar device, which sits atop a cliff high above the ocean, can make a difference, Jones said. It expands the government’s surveillance reach roughly five-fold, because most shoreline radar devices can only track vessels within four miles of the coast.

Since the radar device was installed in early August, data from Ponto Beach has been flowing into the operations center in Riverside, which has a large surveillance room similar to NASA’s Mission Control in Houston.

New software allows officials in Riverside to combine that data with smaller radar detectors, footage from police and Coast Guard cameras along the shore, and data from government planes flying over the coastline.

The goal is launching a coastal surveillance system later this year that integrates all available data in one place, while also adding new information from devices like the one in Carlsbad, Jones said.

“We’d love to have them up and down the coast, but we’re not sure how many we’ll have,” he said, noting that the devices are expensive. “It could be dozens or it could be hundreds.”

The radar device was installed on a 60-day trial basis to determine whether the data it gathered would be useful. Jones said officials have been pleased with the results so far.

He said Carlsbad was chosen because it’s in the government’s geographic “threat vector.”

Several small boats smuggling both immigrants and drugs have landed on the shore near Ponto Beach in recent years. Police and Coast Guard officials have made some arrests, but they also concede that some boats are probably landing undetected late at night or before sunrise.

Jones said the increase in smuggling by boat is because of heightened security at the international border and government efforts to eliminate smuggling by air.

“Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, air smuggling was a huge problem,” he said. “We hope to slowly and steadily make the same progress with maritime smuggling.”

Thomas Tomaiko, a program manager for the borders and maritime division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, stressed that law-abiding boat operators wouldn’t be harassed.

“The overwhelming majority of small vessels operating in and around the United States coasts and in our ports and inland waterways are engaged in legitimate activities,” he said. “However, a small number are platforms for illegal or illicit activities, such as human and drug trafficking, and may be used for waterborne attacks on our maritime infrastructure.”

At Ponto Beach on Wednesday, swimmers and sunbathers criticized the gray radar device as unattractive. But they also said smuggling was a large enough problem that such efforts were warranted.

“It’s a little distracting,” said Gina Eckert, referring to the constantly spinning 12-foot bar atop the device. “But we’re looking this way, at the ocean, not up there. And they need things like that so they can see who’s out there.”

The device, which is along the western edge of Carlsbad Boulevard just south of Avenida Encinas, has raised a lot of eyebrows since it was installed, lifeguard Erik Burgan said.

Jones, the Customs and Border Protection official, praised the state Parks Department, which oversees Ponto Beach, for allowing the radar device to be installed on short notice without any hassle.

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