thedrifter
09-05-06, 01:43 PM
September 11, 2006
FBI gives Marines a crime scene crash course
Key to detaining enemy is evidence, not merely intel
By John Hoellwarth
Staff writer
VAN NUYS, Calif. — Coalition forces in Iraq release just as many prisoners as they detain. And it’s not because they’ve served their time. Rather, those who take them into custody rarely collect the evidence necessary to secure a conviction, according to a I Marine Expeditionary Force captain who’s leading the effort to reverse the trend.
Capt. Adam Potter, an intelligence officer with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, is overseeing training I MEF’s Marines in the finer points of collecting forensic evidence. He’s also pushing for a Defense Department fingerprint data base of enemy detainees modeled after the one administered by the FBI and available to all federal law enforcement agencies.
During the last week of August, Potter and 25 other hand-picked members of the MEF’s intelligence, counterintelligence and reconnaissance communities traveled from Camp Pendleton to Van Nuys, where Los Angeles-based FBI special agents gave the Marines a five-day crash course in crime scene investigation.
The curriculum included lessons on crime scene documentation and photography, bullet trajectory and firearms evidence, blood-spatter analysis and lifting latent fingerprints.
Potter said he intends for the Marines to take this training back to Pendleton to develop MEF-wide standard operating procedures for “sensitive site exploitation” that can be taught to every fire team leader in the 1st Marine Division through Division Schools at Camp Margarita.
It’s a big shift for people like Gunnery Sgt. Doug Smarsty, 1st Marine Division intelligence chief, who deployed to Iraq in 2004. Back then, the standard procedure for catching a bad guy red-handed was to focus on collecting intelligence that would lead to other bad guys instead of collecting evidence that would lead to a conviction, he said.
“We got calls from prisons saying the guys were getting administratively released and do we have anything that shows we should hold them,” Smarsty said. “After a while of doing that, it became apparent that we need to collect more than just intel. We need evidence.”
Staff Sgt. Stephen Bolden, an intel analyst with the division, said the problem has snowballed since a system that allows enemy combatants in and out of custody quickly also provides the enemy with plenty of experts on how to beat the system.
“We learned that they were telling their brothers to keep evidence like weapons caches out in a field because if Americans don’t find anything on you, they have to let you go in three weeks,” he said.
“If you don’t catch the guy pulling the trigger, he’s going to walk,” Smarsty said. “He can have [a bomb] factory in his house and simply say someone else made him put it there against his will. He’s going to walk.”
Potter said, “Getting captured gives them ‘street cred,’ and we’re still doing business like that.”
“As soon as this became an insurgency, our whole focus of efforts should have changed,” Bolden said.
New tracking techniques
Potter’s most immediate goal is to “learn from the best” on how to collect evidence that will keep Anbar province’s most dangerous insurgents behind bars, yet he acknowledges that the effort may be putting the cart before the horse. Potter said the practical value of the forensic training is limited by the absence of a consolidated fingerprint database that can match a person to the print.
As Marines prepared to go back to Iraq after the invasion in 2003, the MEF purchased about 200 biometric automated toolset systems to allow “comparison and recognition of individuals” based on fingerprints, faces and retinal scans, according to an information paper on the system published by Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Va.
“BAT enables military and host-nation security personnel the capability to detain, apprehend or deny entry to unwanted individuals in critical areas,” according to the paper. “The capability enhances overall force protection.”
But Smarsty said the BAT system’s weakness is that, aside from being a fragile piece of gear not suited for field use, it was “designed around the retinal scanner, not for law enforcement but to track people.”
Bolden said what Marines in Iraq need is a reliable way to match the evidence they collect at a crime scene with the identities of known insurgents. He said part of the problem is that different battalions in Iraq are using different BAT systems and typically don’t share the information they collect, meaning one bad guy can get arrested by three different battalions and each one will consider him a first-time offender.
If an insurgent converts his car into a bomb and plows into a convoy, Marines on the scene may find that the insurgent’s rearview mirror was blown down the street. According to Special Agent Laura Nielson, it is quite common to find a good set of prints on a rearview mirror because drivers have to touch it to adjust it.
The Marines who sat through the latent fingerprint class at the FBI field office Aug. 29 now know how to lift these prints. But they have no way to bounce them off the information in the BAT systems.
“Of course, the smart lance corporal will take the print and visually verify it against the ones in the BAT system one by one with his eyes and common sense, but the point is that the Marines in the field deserve the ability to handle this electronically because it would otherwise be too time-consuming to be practical,” Smarsty said.
Potter said he is aware that some of the Corps’ high-level decision-makers will likely mount opposition to the idea of replacing the BAT system but says he also expects there to be high-level buy-in on his initiative to start a database modeled after the FBI’s.
“There will be those who want to defend the BAT system, but I’ve used it in Iraq and it doesn’t work,” he said.
Ellie
FBI gives Marines a crime scene crash course
Key to detaining enemy is evidence, not merely intel
By John Hoellwarth
Staff writer
VAN NUYS, Calif. — Coalition forces in Iraq release just as many prisoners as they detain. And it’s not because they’ve served their time. Rather, those who take them into custody rarely collect the evidence necessary to secure a conviction, according to a I Marine Expeditionary Force captain who’s leading the effort to reverse the trend.
Capt. Adam Potter, an intelligence officer with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, is overseeing training I MEF’s Marines in the finer points of collecting forensic evidence. He’s also pushing for a Defense Department fingerprint data base of enemy detainees modeled after the one administered by the FBI and available to all federal law enforcement agencies.
During the last week of August, Potter and 25 other hand-picked members of the MEF’s intelligence, counterintelligence and reconnaissance communities traveled from Camp Pendleton to Van Nuys, where Los Angeles-based FBI special agents gave the Marines a five-day crash course in crime scene investigation.
The curriculum included lessons on crime scene documentation and photography, bullet trajectory and firearms evidence, blood-spatter analysis and lifting latent fingerprints.
Potter said he intends for the Marines to take this training back to Pendleton to develop MEF-wide standard operating procedures for “sensitive site exploitation” that can be taught to every fire team leader in the 1st Marine Division through Division Schools at Camp Margarita.
It’s a big shift for people like Gunnery Sgt. Doug Smarsty, 1st Marine Division intelligence chief, who deployed to Iraq in 2004. Back then, the standard procedure for catching a bad guy red-handed was to focus on collecting intelligence that would lead to other bad guys instead of collecting evidence that would lead to a conviction, he said.
“We got calls from prisons saying the guys were getting administratively released and do we have anything that shows we should hold them,” Smarsty said. “After a while of doing that, it became apparent that we need to collect more than just intel. We need evidence.”
Staff Sgt. Stephen Bolden, an intel analyst with the division, said the problem has snowballed since a system that allows enemy combatants in and out of custody quickly also provides the enemy with plenty of experts on how to beat the system.
“We learned that they were telling their brothers to keep evidence like weapons caches out in a field because if Americans don’t find anything on you, they have to let you go in three weeks,” he said.
“If you don’t catch the guy pulling the trigger, he’s going to walk,” Smarsty said. “He can have [a bomb] factory in his house and simply say someone else made him put it there against his will. He’s going to walk.”
Potter said, “Getting captured gives them ‘street cred,’ and we’re still doing business like that.”
“As soon as this became an insurgency, our whole focus of efforts should have changed,” Bolden said.
New tracking techniques
Potter’s most immediate goal is to “learn from the best” on how to collect evidence that will keep Anbar province’s most dangerous insurgents behind bars, yet he acknowledges that the effort may be putting the cart before the horse. Potter said the practical value of the forensic training is limited by the absence of a consolidated fingerprint database that can match a person to the print.
As Marines prepared to go back to Iraq after the invasion in 2003, the MEF purchased about 200 biometric automated toolset systems to allow “comparison and recognition of individuals” based on fingerprints, faces and retinal scans, according to an information paper on the system published by Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Va.
“BAT enables military and host-nation security personnel the capability to detain, apprehend or deny entry to unwanted individuals in critical areas,” according to the paper. “The capability enhances overall force protection.”
But Smarsty said the BAT system’s weakness is that, aside from being a fragile piece of gear not suited for field use, it was “designed around the retinal scanner, not for law enforcement but to track people.”
Bolden said what Marines in Iraq need is a reliable way to match the evidence they collect at a crime scene with the identities of known insurgents. He said part of the problem is that different battalions in Iraq are using different BAT systems and typically don’t share the information they collect, meaning one bad guy can get arrested by three different battalions and each one will consider him a first-time offender.
If an insurgent converts his car into a bomb and plows into a convoy, Marines on the scene may find that the insurgent’s rearview mirror was blown down the street. According to Special Agent Laura Nielson, it is quite common to find a good set of prints on a rearview mirror because drivers have to touch it to adjust it.
The Marines who sat through the latent fingerprint class at the FBI field office Aug. 29 now know how to lift these prints. But they have no way to bounce them off the information in the BAT systems.
“Of course, the smart lance corporal will take the print and visually verify it against the ones in the BAT system one by one with his eyes and common sense, but the point is that the Marines in the field deserve the ability to handle this electronically because it would otherwise be too time-consuming to be practical,” Smarsty said.
Potter said he is aware that some of the Corps’ high-level decision-makers will likely mount opposition to the idea of replacing the BAT system but says he also expects there to be high-level buy-in on his initiative to start a database modeled after the FBI’s.
“There will be those who want to defend the BAT system, but I’ve used it in Iraq and it doesn’t work,” he said.
Ellie