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Camacho may also have to go
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Posted on Jul 09 2004
Already faced with a manpower crisis due to the deployment of reservists to Hawaii, the Department of Public Safety may yet lose its commissioner—Edward Camacho—if he receives a deployment order from the Army Reserve.
The department’s deputy commissioner for administration, Franklin Babauta, would leave for Hawaii tomorrow as part of the reservists’ deployment.
Camacho is an Army Reserve major. Camacho said that he would have no choice but to comply with a deployment order, if he is issued one. “So far, I have not received an order yet,” he said yesterday.
The commissioner said Gov. Juan N. Babauta knew about his enlistment with the Army Reserve when the CNMI’s chief executive appointed him to the top Public Safety Department post.
Camacho said he was even on active duty status when he was appointed DPS commissioner, but had to relinquish the status to give way to his stint with the Babauta Cabinet.
Should Camacho be called to active military service, the highest-ranking DPS official who would remain in the department is Santiago Tudela, the deputy commissioner for operations.
Camacho said the rest of the leadership at the divisions within DPS are not members of the Army Reserve.
Tomorrow’s deployment would leave the DPS with 115 policemen and 71 firefighters on Saipan. Some 30 personnel would leave for Hawaii for a three-week training, with the possibility that the deployment would last longer amid Pentagon’s call for reservists to augment U.S. troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
