NRC Staffers Quietly Become Gun-Toting Cops

Typical cases involve falsified records, lost equipment, sleeping on the job

By Mike Stuckey, MSNBC

With no public discussion or input from Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has quietly obtained armed federal police status for a small office of investigators whose big cases typically involve people sleeping on the job, falsifying documents or misplacing equipment.”I didn’t realize you needed guns and handcuffs to protect yourself against paper cuts,” said Dave Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a longtime critic of the NRC’s Office of Investigations.

The police status was granted after the office claimed it needed powers it never or rarely uses, and raised the specter of clandestine and dangerous missions in letters and memos to other federal agencies. While police powers may be of questionable value in performing NRC investigations, they support a job classification that pays non-managerial agents an average of $130,000 a year and as much as $145,000.

(Original Article)