thedrifter
06-28-03, 06:07 AM
June 27, 2003
With coaching, Iraqi police learn ropes
By Mark Fritz
Associated Press
SAMAWAH, Iraq — It wasn’t a big bust, but the Iraqi police pulled it off with apparent aplomb, thanks to some mentoring from the U.S. military. A marketplace was sealed off, a teahouse raided, and 15 traffickers of drugs and weapons are now in jail.
Most important, the raid brought a measure of respect to a reconstituted police force still identified with the recently toppled regime.
“Crowds patted them on the back in the marketplace,” Marine MP Ben Harrison tells the newly chosen police chief inside the refurbished police station of crime-ridden Samawah in southern Iraq.
The chief, Col. Fadel Abbass Ali, grins in appreciation. As part of Monday’s action, the police and military nabbed a police sergeant on active duty selling drugs, even as he was under suspicion of helping regularly raid and rob a big cement factory in town.
“A bonus,” Harrison tells Abbass Ali.
This looks like improvement in law and order, crime and punishment. The patrol officers, the chief says, are gradually gaining confidence in themselves as practitioners of a profession that few civilians respected under Saddam Hussein.
Later in the afternoon, Harrison, who is liaison to Abbass Ali, visits the evidence room, a suffocating little closet used to store guns when Saddam’s men ran the joint. Harrison is miffed because a live hand grenade hasn’t been marked with a paper tag showing from whom it was seized, and hasn’t been turned over to the U.S. anti-bomb unit.
“Why hasn’t this been tagged?” the towering lieutenant from Fairfax, Va., asks the perplexed new policemen.
Not only that, the afterglow of the raid has been dimmed by the disappearance of some of the evidence, particularly some medicine.
“It’s not all here,” Harrison says sternly. “Where is the rest of the stuff?”
Soon, an Iraqi officer slips in with a punched out, partially filled package of pills. “Where’s the rest of it?” Harrison asks. But some of the new policemen have vanished.
Harrison strides off to talk to the new chief. Abbass Ali, a firefighter of great respect but scant police skills, is the third chief chosen in two months.
Later Tuesday evening, at the same main police station, a new Marine MP unit has transferred in to help keep the peace in Samawah. During the 4-to-midnight shift, a half-dozen members of the New York National Guard lounge around their Humvees outside the police station. All but one are regular cops. The raw recruits they’re assigned to “mentor” sit and sprawl on the grass a way away. In Arabic or Brooklynese, each group has its gripes.
Then, a shot from an AK-47 cracks the quiet of the main street, just 200 yards and a narrow alley away from the precinct house. More shots quickly follow. It’s a nightly thing and no one gets excited.
“Uh, police?” Sgt. Rick Triarty, a Yonkers, N.Y., police officer, calls sarcastically to the members of Samawah’s police force, who suddenly realize he is referring to them and jump to their feet.
One enthusiastic rookie runs straight to where the shots originated, and where four shadowy figures move about.
“He’s not carrying his gun!” says Brooklyn detective Tara Dawe, 26.
The four other Iraqi police swing hesitantly into action of sorts, most armed this time, and take off down the alley with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The New York National Guardsmen, both hands on sidearms raised skyward, creep and dart sideways like sand crabs, their bodies always flat against the alley walls.
Up ahead, they get to see one of Samawah’s finest open his line of questioning by kicking an apparently drunk old man square in the stomach. Two other officers saunter away with two other suspects.
Some Iraqi policemen ultimately return, with somebody who is either a suspect or a witness. The situation is a bit confused.
Marine reservist Greg Bruce, a 40-year-old Los Angeles Police Department patrolman who specializes in gangland crime, is philosophical.
“I think when you put together a police force, you don’t necessarily pick the best, but the least worst,” he says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/content/editorial/editart/062703crime.jpg
Marine Lt. Ben Harrison, of Fairfax, Va., left, discusses the results of a drug and arms raid with Col. Fadel Abbass Ali, the new police chief in southern Iraq town of Samawah. — Stewart Innes / AP
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
With coaching, Iraqi police learn ropes
By Mark Fritz
Associated Press
SAMAWAH, Iraq — It wasn’t a big bust, but the Iraqi police pulled it off with apparent aplomb, thanks to some mentoring from the U.S. military. A marketplace was sealed off, a teahouse raided, and 15 traffickers of drugs and weapons are now in jail.
Most important, the raid brought a measure of respect to a reconstituted police force still identified with the recently toppled regime.
“Crowds patted them on the back in the marketplace,” Marine MP Ben Harrison tells the newly chosen police chief inside the refurbished police station of crime-ridden Samawah in southern Iraq.
The chief, Col. Fadel Abbass Ali, grins in appreciation. As part of Monday’s action, the police and military nabbed a police sergeant on active duty selling drugs, even as he was under suspicion of helping regularly raid and rob a big cement factory in town.
“A bonus,” Harrison tells Abbass Ali.
This looks like improvement in law and order, crime and punishment. The patrol officers, the chief says, are gradually gaining confidence in themselves as practitioners of a profession that few civilians respected under Saddam Hussein.
Later in the afternoon, Harrison, who is liaison to Abbass Ali, visits the evidence room, a suffocating little closet used to store guns when Saddam’s men ran the joint. Harrison is miffed because a live hand grenade hasn’t been marked with a paper tag showing from whom it was seized, and hasn’t been turned over to the U.S. anti-bomb unit.
“Why hasn’t this been tagged?” the towering lieutenant from Fairfax, Va., asks the perplexed new policemen.
Not only that, the afterglow of the raid has been dimmed by the disappearance of some of the evidence, particularly some medicine.
“It’s not all here,” Harrison says sternly. “Where is the rest of the stuff?”
Soon, an Iraqi officer slips in with a punched out, partially filled package of pills. “Where’s the rest of it?” Harrison asks. But some of the new policemen have vanished.
Harrison strides off to talk to the new chief. Abbass Ali, a firefighter of great respect but scant police skills, is the third chief chosen in two months.
Later Tuesday evening, at the same main police station, a new Marine MP unit has transferred in to help keep the peace in Samawah. During the 4-to-midnight shift, a half-dozen members of the New York National Guard lounge around their Humvees outside the police station. All but one are regular cops. The raw recruits they’re assigned to “mentor” sit and sprawl on the grass a way away. In Arabic or Brooklynese, each group has its gripes.
Then, a shot from an AK-47 cracks the quiet of the main street, just 200 yards and a narrow alley away from the precinct house. More shots quickly follow. It’s a nightly thing and no one gets excited.
“Uh, police?” Sgt. Rick Triarty, a Yonkers, N.Y., police officer, calls sarcastically to the members of Samawah’s police force, who suddenly realize he is referring to them and jump to their feet.
One enthusiastic rookie runs straight to where the shots originated, and where four shadowy figures move about.
“He’s not carrying his gun!” says Brooklyn detective Tara Dawe, 26.
The four other Iraqi police swing hesitantly into action of sorts, most armed this time, and take off down the alley with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The New York National Guardsmen, both hands on sidearms raised skyward, creep and dart sideways like sand crabs, their bodies always flat against the alley walls.
Up ahead, they get to see one of Samawah’s finest open his line of questioning by kicking an apparently drunk old man square in the stomach. Two other officers saunter away with two other suspects.
Some Iraqi policemen ultimately return, with somebody who is either a suspect or a witness. The situation is a bit confused.
Marine reservist Greg Bruce, a 40-year-old Los Angeles Police Department patrolman who specializes in gangland crime, is philosophical.
“I think when you put together a police force, you don’t necessarily pick the best, but the least worst,” he says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/content/editorial/editart/062703crime.jpg
Marine Lt. Ben Harrison, of Fairfax, Va., left, discusses the results of a drug and arms raid with Col. Fadel Abbass Ali, the new police chief in southern Iraq town of Samawah. — Stewart Innes / AP
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: