Elon Musk’s SpaceX city is getting a police department

Starbase, the city built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in South Texas, is forming its own police squad.

The City Commission approved an ordinance during a special meeting Tuesday that would create a municipal 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, who is expected to hire eight officers, according to local news outlet Valley Central. It could be up and running within a few months.

“There are a lot of assets here with SpaceX operations,” Kent Myers, Starbase city manager, told the outlet. “These assets need to be protected, so the Police Department will play a critical role in protecting those assets.”

It is not clear whether Starbase has submitted its application to TCOLE yet. The city and TCOLE did not respond to requests for comment. Starbase has reportedly hired security consulting firm Vision Quest Solutions to build the division.

Starbase is where SpaceX builds and tests the Starship rocket prototype. The city is small, currently home to a few hundred residents, most of whom are SpaceX employees (or the families of those workers). But it is geographically isolated. The closest neighboring city is Brownsville, which is about 10 miles away, although the drive can take 45 minutes or more.

The police department will be the latest addition to the public services that have become available at Starbase since it was incorporated as a city last year. In October, a few SpaceX employees living at Starbase created a volunteer fire department. The city also created a fire marshal position and conducted its own building inspections and permits at about the same time.

Starbase initially tried to deal with law enforcement within its city limits by contracting with the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office. The city entered into a five-year, $3.5 million contract with the Sheriff’s Office that was supposed to see two deputies patrolling the city at a time, with eight deputies overall assigned to the detail.

Starbase also entered into an agreement last year with the Sheriff’s Office for use of the county jail. The company city agreed to pay each inmate $100 per day and reimburse any additional expenses, such as medical care.

It seems that the deal did not work out.

“We weren’t having a lot of success finding deputies across the county, so we decided to change direction,” Myers told Central Valley. Sheriff Manuel Treviño told the outlet that appears to be partly due to the lack of civil service protections in the contract.