Not everyone sold on combat policing training - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Not everyone sold on combat policing training

Grunts everywhere, prepare to face the Crips of Kabul.

The same techniques used by inner-city cops to fight street gangs in the U.S. are headed to Afghanistan — this time to root out insurgents, collect intelligence on improvised explosive device networks and build sources in Afghan villages.

The Schools of Infantry at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Camp Pendleton, Calif., will start teaching the methods early next year to sergeants and above as part of a broader effort to better prepare Marines for counter-insurgency warfare, where they can expect to be in combat one day and acting as cops the next. It is part of a broader effort that will build on police training for grunts across the Corps, said Lt. Col. David Lucas, head of emerging training for ground combat at Training and Education Command.

The brainchild of retired Los Angeles Police Detective Ralph Morten, the training will be taught by experienced police officers with a minimum of 10 years on the beat.

It includes lessons on:

• Evidence collection. Marines will learn how to collect evidence and find potential military intelligence as they seek out weapons caches, IED-making materials and insurgents.

• Recognizing clues. Troops who can determine why certain streets are buzzing with activity or quiet and who looks suspicious can keep themselves more safe and understand the areas they are patrolling better.

• Beat policing skills. Marines who develop relationships with individuals in a town can go back to those sources for more information and better understand the dynamics they face.

“The program brings a law enforcement perspective to the [counterinsurgency] fight and encourages Marines to think outside the box from conventional warfare kinetic operations,” Lucas said. It “helps them understand some of the basic principles on how to best deal with people, what to look for, how to act amongst the local populace — all of which make them more effective at their jobs and the overall mission.”

The shift to increased police skills, which first began in 2003, adds fuel to an ongoing debate among Marines about what roles are and aren’t appropriate for the infantry.

“It gets back to the internal debate in the Marine Corps: Is this really an infantry kind of thing? Do we really want to [take] the trigger pullers’ attention away from killing people and breaking things? Are we going to erode those skills to get these other skills, and is that going to make us less effective?” said Jeff Miller, a retired lieutenant colonel who helped plan the Corps’ combat policing program.

“They’re relevant questions, and I’m sure there’s going to be a debate on this for many years to come.”

Help in the field

While the introduction of standardized combat police training at SOI is new, the concept itself dates back at least five years in the Corps, said Morten, a former corporal who served during the Vietnam era, but did not deploy.

Then-Maj. Gen. Jim Mattis approached LAPD in late 2003 after the initial invasion of Iraq, asking for guidance on how troops under his command with Pendleton-based 1st Marine Division could improve their urban warfare skills, Morten said.

“He saw the insurgency as somewhat of a countergang fight, given all the criminal activity they were involved in,” said Morten, considered an expert on suicide bombers. “He was right on the money with that, and it’s even more so with the Taliban, with their drug dealing and things.”

The program they developed drew on Morten’s background as a member of LAPD’s bomb squad and skills he learned during an overseas training session with the Israeli National Police. It stressed understanding neighborhood dynamics and identifying military intelligence in everything from the behavior of storekeepers to why certain streets may be buzzing with activity or completely silent.

“They control more of their own destiny by going out and looking for bad guys themselves,” Morten said. “What I tell them to look for is nervous behavior for no obvious reason. You know, why does that guy turn around and walk away the moment you turn a corner? Why does someone have a surprised look on their face? Those are the things we teach Marines, to read people’s body language and behavior.”

In 2007, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization launched its own law enforcement training program, hiring civilian law enforcement professionals and assigning six of them to Multi National Force-West in Anbar province, Iraq, at the headquarters level. Oversight of the program was eventually shifted to the Army and expanded in 2008 to send LEPs with deploying battalions, Marine officials said.

More recent details about the program are fuzzy. Although Marine officials answered general questions about combat policing, Christopher Grey, an Army spokesman for the LEP program, refused numerous interview requests. Marine officials had plans to use 56 LEPs in fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, according to Marine administrative message 282/09, released in April.

In Afghanistan, 12 LEPs are serving with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, MEB spokesman Maj. Bill Pelletier said. Two are assigned to MEB headquarters, with one in a counter-IED cell and one working with Afghan National Security Forces. Nine other LEPs serve at battalion-level and regimental-level headquarters, and one serves with 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, based at Combat Outpost Layne in Helmand province, Pelletier said.

In September, 15 LEPs served in Iraq with Multi National Force-West, said 1st Lt. Rachel Beatty, a Marine spokeswoman there.

LEPs’ assignments are made by Marine commanders, Pelletier said. The contractors typically assist in the collection, investigation, analysis, integration and dissemination of information pertinent to criminal and IED networks, he said. They usually join a Marine unit about six months before deployment, and once in theater, often serve as a unit’s point man to ensure proper evidence tracking as it is sent for forensic examination, making some trips outside the wire with Marines on patrol.

“LEPs are passionate about their mission and believe they serve as a combat multiplier for and lifesaver of Marines,” Pelletier said. “They are steadfast in their commitment to serve their country in their retirement from a lifetime of service to their communities as law enforcement officers.”

Facing the skeptics

Not everyone is behind the concept, however.

Miller, an intelligence analyst for Lockheed Martin who retired as a Marine Reserve officer in 2008, said that even after years of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, some Marine officers aren’t convinced an infantryman can be ready for conventional warfare and simultaneously possess the mind-set needed to identify clues and intelligence through combat policing.

“Marines are really good at killing people and breaking things,” said Miller, who worked as a police detective and patrolman in Long Beach, Calif., while in the Reserve. “We’re trying to recalibrate Marines from the kill-people-and-break-things mentality to the cop-on-the-beat mentality because it’s just as important. But there’s an internal debate within the Marine Corps on whether you can do both with the same Marine, and that debate is far from over.”

Nevertheless, there is occasional friction between Marines and LEPs, including from some battalion commanders who do not want LEPs to instruct their troops, Miller said.

LEPs also make substantially more money than the troops they deploy with. Military Professional Resources Inc., of Alexandria, Va., which supplies the LEPs, typically pays them up to $252,000 a year while they are deployed, according to information obtained by Marine Corps Times. The base salary for LEPs while training troops in the U.S. typically starts at about $125,000, and increases 70 percent during deployments. MPRI officials referred requests for comment and interviews with LEPs to Army officials overseeing the program.

Another criticism of LEPs is that they join Marine units with a wide variety of law enforcement backgrounds. Some don’t have big-city police experience that would help in understanding organized crime. The Corps appears to be addressing some of those issues, planning a standardized syllabus and curriculum that LEPs will use in 2010 when training Marines.

“It’s one thing to get a guy from Chicago [Police Department], or [the New York Police Department] or LAPD and put him to work. They’re big-city cops and they’ve dealt with big-city problems and organized crime and stuff like that,” Miller said. “But when you’re coming from an eight-person department and you’ve never seen a gang member in your entire career, your perspective is different and your eyeball is calibrated differently.”

Morten, who has deployed to Iraq six times and trained 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, in September 2008 in Afghanistan, said that despite the differences in career backgrounds, LEPs all comprehend “the dynamics of police work” and can get the job done.

“They all understand what this nervous behavior is about,” he said. “If you give them this curriculum, it’ll help them teach it. It may be an issue for some, but I think the Marines are going to overcome it and use these guys very wisely.”

Miller and Morten, now the senior adviser for irregular operations at Lockheed Martin, said they encounter skeptics in the Corps who are opposed to performing police work, but frequently they haven’t previously been exposed to the program.

“Some people hear ‘cop,’ and they automatically picture military police,” Miller said. “They already have their bias. I understand that and I might make that cognitive evaluation myself, had I not been a cop.”

Morten said Marines frequently acquire basic combat policing patrol skills in a single session with him.

“I’ve heard Marines say, ‘I joined the Marines to be a Marine, not to be a cop.’ But with the nature of counterinsurgency, they’re going to have to be a little bit of both,” he said. “We can’t drop 1,000-pound bombs all over the place. The bad guys live among the citizens, and we have to go in and dig them out, just like we do in gang work in Los Angeles.”