Posted on 04/11/2003 4:13:53 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Wanted: police for Iraqi force
State Department to recruit U.S. officers who would provide training
04/11/2003
Amid widespread looting and growing pressure to bring order to liberated parts of Iraq, the U.S. State Department has begun laying the groundwork for American police officers to help train and equip a new Iraqi civilian police force.
The State Department-sponsored program would be funded with $25 million of the $80 billion reconstruction package pending before Congress.
"We are reaching out to law enforcement agencies nationwide to let them know what we're doing," said Steve Otto, a former director of the Dallas police training academy who now coordinates the State Department's International Civilian Policing Program.
The State Department has asked several private military services companies, including the Fort Worth subsidiary of Dyncorp, to submit cost estimates for police training in Iraq.
A number of current and retired police officers from North Texas and elsewhere have already been contacted to recruit trainers and help assess Iraq's needs.
In Kosovo and Bosnia, American police trainers had to filter out persecutors and war criminals from local police pools. One expert estimates that perhaps 30,000 of Iraq's prewar police force of 80,000 could be rehired.
Rick Barton is co-director of the Post Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank whose report recommends, in part, that Americans train a new civilian police force in Iraq as a first critical step toward reconstruction. But finding Iraqis willing to serve could be time-consuming, he said.
"They are worried about revenge, and so it's going to take an effort to bring them back in," he said.
The State Department sent its first contingent of 50 American police officers to Haiti in 1994 as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission. Today, about 7,500 officers from 50 countries are deployed worldwide.
Former Fort Worth Police Sgt. Steve Rogers, who now lives in Weatherford, said he served 18 months in Kosovo, working homicides and organized-crime cases before becoming an adviser.
He said one of the toughest tasks was separating honest recruits from corrupt ones.
"How do you do a background check? It's impossible," he said. "About all you can do is go to the villages and ask, 'Is he a good guy?' "
Mr. Rogers said recruiting officers for Iraq could be a problem.
"You got people over there who will kill themselves just to kill you," he said. "The only way you can deal with people like that is to kill them, and I'm not willing to do that."
E-mail tbensman@dallasnews.com
He said one of the toughest tasks was separating honest recruits from corrupt ones.
"How do you do a background check? It's impossible," he said. "About all you can do is go to the villages and ask, 'Is he a good guy?' "
Mr. Rogers said recruiting officers for Iraq could be a problem.
"You got people over there who will kill themselves just to kill you," he said. "The only way you can deal with people like that is to kill them, and I'm not willing to do that."
>"You got people over there who will kill themselves just to kill you," he said. "The only way you can deal with people like that is to kill them, and I'm not willing to do that."
Maybe they should send someone other than Mr. Rogers for this kind of job.
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