Elon Musk’s SpaceX company town is getting a police department

Starbase, the company town that Elon Musk’s SpaceX created in South Texas, is forming its own police squad.

The city’s commission approved an ordinance during a special meeting Tuesday that would create a municipal police department, subject to approval from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE). The department will be run by a chief of police elected by the city’s 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 is a lot of assets here with the operations of SpaceX,” Starbase city administrator Kent Myers told the outlet. “Those assets need to be protected, and so the police department will play a critical part in protecting those assets.”

It’s not clear if Starbase has submitted its application to the TCOLE yet. The city and the TCOLE did not respond to requests for comment. Starbase reportedly hired security consulting firm Vision Quest Solutions to build out the department.

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

A police department would be the latest addition to public services that have become available in Starbase since it was incorporated as a city last year. In October, a handful of SpaceX employees who live at Starbase started a volunteer fire department. The city also created a fire marshal position and took on its own building inspections and permitting around that same time.

Starbase initially tried to handle law enforcement within its city limits by contracting with the Cameron County sheriff’s office. The city struck a $3.5 million, five-year contract with the sheriff’s office that was supposed to see two deputies patrol the city at a time, with eight deputies overall assigned to the detail.

Starbase also struck an agreement last year with the sheriff’s office to use the county’s jail. The company town agreed to pay $100 per day per inmate and to reimburse any additional expenses, like medical care.

The deal apparently has not worked out, though.

“We didn’t have a lot of success in finding deputies through 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 told the outlet.