Starbase, the corporate city that Elon Musk’s SpaceX created in South Texas, is creating its own police force.
The City Commission approved an ordinance during a special meeting Tuesday that would create a city police department subject to approval by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE). The department will be led by a police chief elected by the city commission and is expected to hire eight officers, according to local news outlet Valley Central. It could be up and running in a few months.
“There are a lot of assets here with SpaceX operations,” Starbase City Administrator Kent Myers told the Journal. “This property needs to be protected, so the police department will play a key role in protecting this property.”
It is unclear if Starbase has yet sent its request to TCOLE. The city and TCOLE did not respond to requests for comment. Starbase reportedly hired security consulting firm Vision Quest Solutions to build the department.
The starbase is where SpaceX manufactures and tests its prototype Starship rocket. The town is small – currently home to only a few hundred residents, most of whom are SpaceX employees (or family of those employees). But it is geographically isolated. The closest neighboring town is Brownsville, which is about 10 miles away, although the drive can take 45 minutes or more.
The police department would be the latest addition to the public services that have become available in Starbase since its founding as a city last year. In October, a handful of SpaceX employees who live on Starbase started a volunteer fire department. The city also created a fire marshal position and did its own building inspections and permitting around the same time.
Starbase initially sought to handle law enforcement within its city limits under a contract with the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office. The city entered into a five-year, $3.5 million contract with the sheriff’s office to have two deputies patrol the city at a time, with a total of eight deputies assigned to the detail.
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Starbase also reached an agreement with the sheriff’s office last year to use the county jail. The city agreed to pay the company $100 per day per prisoner and cover all other expenses such as medical care.
But apparently the agreement did not work out.
“We haven’t had much success finding representatives across the county, so we decided to change direction,” Myers told Valley Central. That was apparently due in part to the contract not having civil service protections, Sheriff Manuel Treviño said.