Starbase, the corporate town founded by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in South Texas, has its own police squad.
At a special meeting Tuesday, the City Commission approved an ordinance creating a city police department, subject to approval by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE). The department will be run by a police chief elected by the city commission and will employ eight officers, according to local news outlet Valley Central. It could be up and running within a few months.
“We have a lot of assets here that are relevant to SpaceX operations,” Starbase City Administrator Kent Myers told the show. “These assets need to be protected, so the police will have an important role to play in protecting these assets.”
It is not clear whether Starbase has yet submitted an application to TCOLE. The city and TCOLE did not respond to requests for comment. Starbase has reportedly hired security consulting firm Vision Quest Solutions to strengthen the division.
Starbase is where SpaceX builds and tests prototype Starship rockets. The city is small, with only a few hundred residents currently, most of whom are SpaceX employees (or their families). However, it is geographically isolated. The closest neighboring town is Brownsville, about 16 miles away, but it can be a 45-minute drive or more.
The police station is the latest addition to the public services that have become available in Starbase since it incorporated as a city last year. In October, several SpaceX employees living at Starbase started a volunteer fire department. The city also created the position of fire marshal and assumed its own building inspection and permitting duties around the same time.
Starbase initially sought to serve law enforcement in the city by contracting with the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office. The city signed a $3.5 million, five-year contract with the sheriff’s office that would have two officers patrolling the city at a time and a total of eight officers on detail.
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Starbase entered into an agreement with the sheriff’s office last year to use the county jail. Corporate City agreed to pay $100 per inmate per day and reimburse additional costs such as medical costs.
However, it appears that this deal did not work out.
“We didn’t have much success finding deputies countywide, so we decided to change direction,” Myers told Valley Central. Sheriff Manuel Treviño told the show that the lack of civil service protections in the contract was a contributing factor.
