[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 66 (Thursday, April 28, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2543-S2544]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO FEDERAL EMPLOYEES
Greg King
Mr. CARPER. Good afternoon, Mr. President. For more than a year now,
as the Presiding Officer knows since he has had the good fortune--or
bad fortune of drawing the short straw--of sitting there when I come to
the Senate floor just about every month to highlight the extraordinary
work that is being done by the men and women of the Department of
Homeland Security--I am here to do that again today. The agency has so
many talented folks, and they do incredibly important work, so there is
no shortage of material.
As the Presiding Officer knows, the Department of Homeland Security
is made up of 22 component agencies and employs over 200,000 people.
These men and women work around the clock, and the work they do is
designed to protect all of us--protect our families and protect our
country. Last month we were reminded of just how crucial the work they
do is when terrorists attacked a train station and airport check-in
area in Brussels, Belgium, setting off bombs that killed 32 people and
wounded hundreds more. Our thoughts and prayers have been and remain
with the families, loved ones, and victims of these horrible attacks.
Just 6 days before these tragic attacks, I spoke on the floor about
the difficult but critical work performed by the 59,000 employees of
the Transportation Security Administration, affectionately known as
TSA. These men and women work every day. They do so to ensure that all
of us--Americans and tourists who visit--may travel around our country
and around the world safe from harm.
The attack in Brussels shows us once again just how important these
efforts--performed by the men and women at TSA--are to every single
American and to our visitors. It also reminds us how important it is
that TSA has the tools and resources needed to effectively carry out
their mission.
To help ensure that the TSA is well equipped to protect the public, I
worked with a number of our Senate colleagues last week--Democrats and
Republicans alike--to include amendments to a bill reauthorizing the
Federal Aviation Administration. Our amendments will help make airports
and transit hubs across our country safer for travelers by doubling the
number of teams--called VIPR teams--of Federal agents and bomb-sniffing
dogs that patrol our airports and subways to deter and identify
potential attackers.
These amendments will also make security improvements to public areas
in airports and train stations and ensure that the men and women
patrolling those areas can effectively respond to the types of active
shooter incidents we have unfortunately seen more frequently in recent
months.
These commonsense amendments are just one of the many ways we can
support the men and women at TSA and throughout the Department of
Homeland Security who work on the frontlines every day screening
passengers, guarding our ports of entry, and patrolling our transit
hubs.
One part of the support we need to extend to these brave public
servants is world-class training and education. By expanding and
improving training opportunities for our law enforcement personnel, we
can make sure they have the knowledge and make sure they have the
capability to respond to every situation that may arise. That is why
one of the best tools in our homeland security arsenal is the Federal
Law Enforcement Training Center.
As my staff knows, I don't like acronyms very much, but this is a
pretty good one. It is called the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center. It is located in Glynco, GA. It goes by the acronym F-L-E-T-C,
and we affectionately call it FLETC. I am not crazy about acronyms, but
that is a pretty good one. We call it FLETC.
The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is tasked with teaching
the men and women we deploy to the frontlines how to best utilize the
technologies and techniques needed to protect Americans here at home
and around the world. They provide training to literally dozens of
Federal agencies, State law enforcement personnel from across our
country, and our international partners, who travel from all over the
world to learn from the best right here in America. From active shooter
trainings, to advanced forensic techniques, to methods to counter human
trafficking, FLETC instructors provide training in nearly 100 courses.
They host the training academies for a number of other agencies,
including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Recently, TSA announced that they would be establishing a new,
permanent academy for transportation security officers at FLETC's main
facility in Glynco, GA. Having their training centralized at FLETC will
allow TSA to better ensure uniform training for all of their officers
and better collaborate with other components of the Department of
Homeland Security.
Providing world-class training and instruction to tens of thousands
of law enforcement officers each year requires bringing together some
of the most highly qualified professional instructors from across our
country. The more than 1,000 men and women from across law enforcement
who serve at FLETC utilize their personal experience in the field to
create and to lead effective trainings that help law enforcement
professionals keep us--Americans and our guests--safe and secure each
day.
One of FLETC's world-class instructors is Greg King, pictured right
here to my left. For nearly 10 years, Mr. King has been an instructor
at FLETC, utilizing his own experience to train Federal officers
deployed around the world.
Before coming to FLETC, Greg served his hometown of Cleveland, OH,
working for the Cleveland Police Department for 28 years. If he is
listening, I would just suggest that I have been thinking that Greg may
have started when he was about 10. He looks pretty good for a guy who
has been doing that for this long. He has a career spanning nearly
three decades. Greg did everything from working undercover as a street
crimes unit detective, to investigating financial crimes, murders, and
crimes against children. For those 28 years, Greg has dedicated his
life to protecting the community of Cleveland and giving back to the
town in which he grew up.
Today, Greg serves as a senior instructor at FLETC, working as
program coordinator for the Case Organization and Presentation Training
Program, the Internet Investigations Training Program, and as assistant
program coordinator for the Intelligence Analyst Training Program. Greg
has a wealth of knowledge in these areas. His colleagues call him--this
is a quote, their words, not mine--a real ``subject matter expert''
with the kind of expertise that can only come from real-world
experience. Through the lesson plans and course materials he develops,
Greg strives to impart the firsthand knowledge he gained on the force
to his students so that when they leave his class, they are able to
effectively build cases, conduct investigations, analyze information,
and ultimately catch the bad guys.
At FLETC, Greg's colleagues also refer to him as an ``Energizer
bunny.'' Some of my colleagues have referred to me in those same terms.
I think it is a compliment--I hope so--and in his case, I am sure it
is. His energy and his passion for his work inspire other instructors
and keep his students engaged.
Given his dedication to his students and to the FLETC mission, Greg
has earned the respect of his peers and FLETC leadership alike. It is
no wonder, then, that Greg King was named FLETC instructor of the year
for 2015. Think about that--instructor of the year for the entire
school. It is clearly a well-deserved honor.
When Greg isn't training law enforcement professionals, he spends
time with his family--his wife Shelley, their two daughters Lela and
Shayla; and their son Rayshawn. I want to give my special thanks to
Greg's wife Shelley and to their two daughters and their son for
sharing him with us--with the people of Cleveland and now the people of
the United States--for not just 28 years but 38 years in all. He has
dedicated countless hours, I am told as
[[Page S2544]]
well, to his community and to his country in addition to that.
In his 10 years at FLETC, Greg King has helped train countless law
enforcement officers, who have used the valuable lessons from his
courses every single day to arrest criminals, to protect our fellow
citizens, and to help keep Americans safe around the world.
FLETC has four core values that the agency and their employees
attempt to abide by, and I am going to mention those today: No. 1,
respect; No. 2, integrity--one of our former colleagues, Alan Simpson,
the Senator from Wyoming, used to say about integrity: If you have it,
nothing else matters. If you don't have it, nothing else matters.
Integrity is the second value I want to mention for FLETC. So respect,
integrity, service, and excellence.
I like to say that one of the things we need to focus on is to have
excellence in everything we do as a country, here in the Senate and
across the country. If it isn't perfect, make it better. And that is
one of the core values for FLETC.
Respect, integrity, service, and excellence. I have mentioned that
those values actually look a little bit like some of the values we
embrace in the office from the State that I am privileged to represent.
Greg has lived this one, using his own experience, to make the next
generation of law enforcement officers and our country even better
prepared to face the threats of tomorrow.
Greg is just one shining example of the critical work being done by
more than 1,000 instructors at FLETC. These instructors make it their
own mission to ensure that law enforcement personnel across our country
are well prepared for whatever they might face on the job.
So to Greg, to all of the men and women at FLETC, and to everyone at
the Department of Homeland Security, I thank you for your hard work day
in and day out, I thank you for your service to the people of our
country, and I urge you to keep up the good work.
Some of us travel on trains. Some of us travel on buses. Some of us
travel on airplanes and helicopters, in our own cars, trucks, and vans.
I do a combination of those, but I do a fair amount of travel in the
air. I was a naval flight officer for many years. I am a retired Navy
captain. I spent a lot of time in Navy airplanes. I love the Navy. I
loved serving in the Navy. But now they don't let me--they let me ride
in a commercial plane. Sometimes we get to fly in military planes, too,
which is a kick. But when you fly commercial aviation, at the airport
you generally go through a security check, and they want to make sure
you are not carrying anything in your luggage or anything on your
person that is inappropriate or illegal. And you have to be confronted
by usually a series of TSA officers. I just want to remind us all that
they are there to protect us. That is their job, to make sure the
planes we get on, whether they are going 200, 300, 400 miles or 2,000
or 3,000 miles to go from one side of our country to the other side or
one side of the world to the other side--the job of the TSA officers is
to protect us. They have a very tough job, and there is actually a
tension in the job that exists because of the work they do.
On the one hand, every day there are tens of thousands of travelers,
maybe hundreds of thousands of travelers, pulsing through our airports,
trying to get from a terminal, from a gate, onto a plane in time to
catch their flights. In some cases, they have had to recheck their
bags. They have had to go through maybe unloading their suitcases and
showing that what they have in their suitcases is not inappropriate or
illegal. There is a rush to get through to try to catch their flights.
TSA is there. In some cases, they slow down that traffic, that flow,
and they slow down that flow of traffic in order to make sure that what
all of us passengers every day are carrying in our suitcases or
briefcases or purses or on our bodies is not inappropriate and is not
illegal. They do it to protect all of us. Sometimes the TSA folks get a
little bit frazzled. I would say we would, too, if we had to do the
work they do.
A lot of times, when I fly commercial and when I go through the
check-in, after they check my ID or whatever, I take it upon myself to
say to the TSA officers--I tell them who I am, that I am a senior
Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, and I thank them for what they do. I say: We value your work
and we appreciate it, and I just wanted you to know that. I can't tell
you how many times a TSA officer has said to me: Nobody has ever
thanked me before. Nobody has ever thanked me before.
Sometimes we can't pay people enough for the work they do, and they
work hard for their money.
I would ask others, when you see somebody, especially TSA officers
who go out of their way in spite of all of the hustle and bustle and
pressure on them--they manage to still be polite, courteous, and
helpful--thank them. It might be the first time. You may become the
first person who has ever said ``thank you'' to them.
At the end of the day, one of the things that means a lot to me is
whenever people thank me for my service to our country, whether it was
in uniform or as Governor, Senator, or here today. So I urge you to do
that. When I do that, it makes me feel better and it makes them feel
better too.
Mr. President, I am looking around the Senate Chamber, looking for
Democrats or Republicans who are rushing to get to the podium to say
something. I don't see anybody rushing.
With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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