Iraqi Police Progress
Today’s Bloggers’ Roundtable was with U.S. Air Force Col. John W. Probst, with the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, a multinational force unit, that works with the Iraqi Ministry of Interior to strengthen Iraq’s local police forces.
This was one of the drier interviews. Probst is a planner and talked about building planning capability for the police at the national, regional and local levels.
Logistics seems to be one of the key issues. The Iraqis are still building a mechanism to supply the police, from regional centers, and to track supplies from order through disbursement.
I’ll link the transcript when it’s up.
Chuck Simmins, you were first on line. Why don’t you get us started?
Q Good afternoon, sir. Chuck Simmins from America’s North Shore
Journal. Last week we had the opportunity to interview Colonel Kornish in
Kandahar on similar issues involving the Afghan police, and he told us then that
the Afghan police right now were in survival mode, not in policing mode. Could
you speak to — in generalities as well as maybe some specifics, as to where we
are with the Iraqi police doing traditional police work versus just not getting
killed?
COL. PROBST: I will do my best, Chuck.
The policing — if you were to travel here, aside from what’s
happened in the last five or six or seven years, you would have to be very
careful when you enter the country to check your template of what you consider
policing in the U.S. at the door before you enter because policing in our home
country is very much different than policing is here. Back home we’re used to
very proactive police, proactive patrols; people that are very open and willing
to go a police station or to a small reporting station to report a crime. And
our police have a multitude of programs there.
The police here — the policing here is a lot more of a reactive
endeavor and has been for some time. Right now I would tell you that the police
are gaining more confidence in the local populace. There was a time earlier on
where people did not want to simply go out of their home and go down the street
to the police station to report a crime. Part of that was because of mere
safety on the streets. The other part was even the police stations didn’t
necessarily feel as safe as they needed to for the people to go there and to
have confidence in that, one, the police could take the report and react to the
report.
In the last 10 months that I have been here, we have seen force
protection measures — simple things like standoff distances and barriers,
generators for more electricity at police stations so they would have lights on
to take a report, so a computer could work, so a radio could work. And the
police stations are now being used more than they were before. People have more
confidence in the ability of the police to receive them and to gain — and have
interaction with them where there may be something coming back to the
individual.
Table of contents for Bloggers' Roundtable
- We Don’t Commute to Work Anymore
- Terror Investors Might Want to Look Elsewhere
- I Hear It’s Safe
- In Our Area the Taliban Are Paying More a Month
- Iraqi Police Progress
- Sept. 11 Conspirators Going to Trial
- Continued Courage and Committment
- The Year of Opportunity – 2008
- Competent, Capable, Effective Leadership
- Afghan Army Acts: Decisive, Overwhelming
- Iraqi Military Medical Services
- Dallas Reporting: Aid Mission to Georgia
- Military Integration Into NIMS
- Status Report From the Afghan South
- Status Report From the Afghan East
- Fourth Fleet Is About Partnerships
- Iraqi Police Primer
- Sons of Iraq Status Update
- Army Apologizes
- We Are Here!
- Yar! There Be Pirates!
- Cobra Gold 2009
- Our Best: Sergeant First Class Helen Gillespie
- Africa Partnership Station Comes to E Africa
- Building the Rule of Law in Afghanistan
- Sons of Iraq and the Iraqi Budget
- Air Force Combat Camera – Focus on the Fight
- Afghan Update for July 22, 2009
- The Army Goal: 1.5 Gigawatts of Renewable Energy
- Withdrawing from Iraq – some perspective
- Iraqi security update April 22 2010
- 2012 Federal Budget for Defense
- Pacific Command and the Pacific
- Air Force high flyers mark 100th anniversary
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Original writing, Commentary, Original writing, Original writing, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
