"How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam"
Sadly, I run across this kind of thing quite often (and not just in law enforcement, in the military and elsewhere in government too at times):
How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam
There aren’t nearly enough counterterrorism experts to instruct all of America’s police. So we got these guys instead.
By Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze
Washington Monthly, March-April 2011
Quote:
...In recent years, the United States has become more and more committed to the idea of bringing local police forces into the business of sniffing out terrorists. In 2002, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force was set up to coordinate existing collaborative efforts among federal, state, and local law enforcement. And since 2006, the Department of Justice has been developing a program called the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, through which local cops are meant to act as intelligence gatherers on the ground, feeding reports of suspicious activity to a network of data “fusion centers” spread out across the country. The system is scheduled to be up and running in all seventy-two of the nation’s fusion centers by the end of this year. But in order for the cops to play a role in counterterrorism, the thinking goes, they need to be trained. And that’s where Kharoba and his ilk—counterterrorism trainers for hire—come in.
The very idea of integrating local police into the nation’s counterterror intelligence efforts is a subject of debate among security experts. People at the highest level of law enforcement and intelligence—to say nothing of civil liberties groups—have concerns about the strategy. While the premise is perhaps intuitively appealing—particularly in a place like Florida, where several of the 9/11 hijackers took flying lessons—one danger is that the system will be flooded with bad leads. An increase in incidents like the mistaken arrests on Alligator Alley would only degrade police work, obscure real threats, and spoil relations between America’s cops and America’s Muslims—who have thus far volunteered some of the most fruitful leads in preventing domestic terror attacks.
It might be theoretically possible to ward off such an outcome if police could be provided with impeccable training. But one of the central problems is that the demand for training far exceeds the supply of qualified instructors. Even the CIA and FBI have had trouble finding people with the key skills to fill their ranks. For state and local law enforcement departments, the scarcity is even more acute. Into the void, self-styled experts have rushed in.
While expertise in counterterrorism training may be in short supply, money for it is not. Each year the federal government directs billions of dollars (no one knows exactly how much) in terrorism-related training grants to state and local governments. These funds cascade down into myriad training programs like the one at Broward College, where instructors like Kharoba ply their trade with only minimal supervision....
Chasing $$$, not effectiveness
There has always been a market for snake oil salesmen, and despite having some of the best universities in the world our nation's popular culture is largely shaped by various forms of media that present stories for profit, not to provide a non-bias study for intelligent consideration of the audience.
The view above represents the extreme view that every Muslim is a potential terrorist, and then makes some stupid acquisitions about head banners being an indicator of being a terrorist. Some of his points on body language on the other hand were correct, so don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Hopefully both Police and Soldiers can tell the difference between legitimate advice and BS. I guess we could use he same line of logic for the Italian Mafia. To be a member of the Italian you need to be Italian. Any Italian who discusses family matters in an airport must be referring to the Mafia and should be reported. Sadly, I'm sure that kind of logic would find a market somewhere. The views represented by this kind of extremist play into AQ's strategy of creating them versus us mindset.
On the opposite end of the extreme scale we have those who blindly embrace the philosophy of political correctness where no behavior is wrong, except for those who condemn someone else's views. Accuse a Muslim extremist who promotes violence to establish sharia law and abuse women within the U.S., then you are biggot in their eyes. Somehow in their perverse logic the Muslim extremist isn't? This group of PC extremists would leave our country vulnerable if it was up to them.
The reality seems to be that we do have a growing homegrown threat that needs to be addressed wisely, which doesn't mean over reacting which will only accerlate the spread of radicalism, nor does it mean ignoring the problem as the PC crowd would propose.
The responses also have to appease to the voters in a democracy, so it is important to pull the media into the role of informing insteading of entertaining the public so appropriate decisions are supported. I could make some comments about Congress, but rather not waste my time with that den of radicals.
Dispelling the Falsehoods of Washington Monthly Magazine
Dispelling the Falsehoods of Washington Monthly Magazine
by
Major Joseph M. Bail, Jr. (ret.)
Chester, Pennsylvania Police SWAT Commander
Recently, the Washington Monthly published an article entitled, “How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam,” by Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze. In it, the authors maligned the reputations of Sam Kharoba; John Giduck; retired Marine Lt. Col. Joe Bierly; and retired Army Major Richard Hughbank. I’m going to explain how the authors told portions of the truth, twisted to convey false impressions, and how the information they were given was obtained under false pretenses.
Giduck has a law degree, a master’s degree in Russian studies, and a Ph.D. in Middle East studies. He was contacted by Craze who said he was writing an article on the need for American police to be better prepared to respond to terror attacks. In response to questions about how Giduck knew Russian spetsnaz soldiers whom he interviewed after the Beslan school siege in September 2004 for his book, Terror at Beslan, he explained that years before he had known the former director of the KGB for the St. Petersburg region, Anatoli Kurkov. With Kurkov’s help he met and trained with Russian spetsnaz hand-to-hand combat instructors, and over time met with others from different units. Giduck said he knew men in Alpha, Vityaz, SOBR, Rus and others. However, in the article they say that they called Rus and Vityaz. Rus supposedly said that they never heard of John, and Vityaz confirmed that he had attended some type of “commercial” course, but not any counter-terror training.
To think that Russian spetsnaz units can be called by looking up their numbers in a phone book is ridiculous. Even if they had somehow gotten a number, would anyone really believe that they would tell these unknown people the truth about anything, if they even talked to them at all? Giduck said, “They obviously didn’t want confirmation. If they had, they could have simply asked me and I would have put them in touch with the right people.” Retired Green Beret Sergeant Major John Anderson was given permission to accompany John on some training programs. “They did everything John said. This included counter-terror hostage-rescue and close quarters battle,” he said.
Yuri Ferdigalov was a spetsnaz commando and war veteran. He traveled to Beslan with John as the siege was happening, then on two more trips interviewing those involved in the operation. Yuri confirms that they spent a great deal of time with officers from Alpha, SOBR and Rus. I can verify the same thing as I accompanied them on their final trip. We did days of interviews of Rus commanders on their base. I also met an Alpha officer John wrote about in his book.
Professor Emeritus Walt Copley destroys Stalcup and Craze’s intimation that John did not know a KGB chief. After retiring from the Air Force as an intelligence officer, he became the head of a college criminal justice department. “I had tried for years to get a study abroad in Russia put together, but with no success,” he said. When he met Giduck they immediately flew to St. Petersburg to set it up. One of the first people he met was Kurkov. “Director Kurkov even got us into the Lubyanka, the KGB’s headquarters in Moscow,” he said.
Anderson says Kurkov visited John in Colorado. During one visit Anderson held a dinner for Kurkov. “In all my years in Special Forces I never imagined I would have a KGB head in my own house,” he said.
Giduck flanked by KGB Director Kurkov and his wife Nina,
at Anderson’s house.
The authors also attacked John’s book for reporting the rapes of teenage girls inside the school. “When we first got there all everyone was talking about were the rapes,” Ferdigalov said. “[Everyone was] telling us about how the terrorists brutalized these girls.” “Then somewhere along the line the story from the media changed,” Giduck said. He points out that sometimes the political needs of both sides coincide. “The terrorists and the liberal western press don’t want the world to hear that they are rapists. But also the Russian government recognizes that it appears incapable of protecting its citizens when people think that they stood outside while girls were being brutalized.”
Russian speakers Igor Livits, Lisa Tongren and Lance Alred confirmed that a year ago a spetsnaz colonel visiting John said: “The official position of my government now is that no rapes occurred.”
Stalcup and Craze cited journalist C.J. Chivers who wrote an article about Beslan for Esquire in 2006, and who also insisted that no rapes occurred. Giduck said:
Chivers suffers from the same problem as the rest of us. He wasn’t inside the school either. So just like me, he is left to report what others tell him. In their article Chivers challenges me to give the name of one girl who was raped at Beslan. Two hundred thousand females are raped in America every year, but I bet he couldn’t give the name of a single one of those either. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to them.
Bierly says, “They misrepresented themselves to me. I was honest in trying to answer their questions and they lied. They said that I did ten years of ‘black ops’ after the Marine Corps. I never said that.”
Hughbank, a decorated veteran with two tours in Afghanistan, insists Craze interviewed him under the pretext that he was a doctoral student conducting research for his dissertation. Hughbank is columnist for Inside Homeland Security magazine, and has written two books on terrorism. He has a master’s degree and graduate certificate in terrorism studies, and is a doctoral candidate in homeland security.
Clearly the targets of the article are experienced Americans providing much needed training to law enforcement. Many statements in the article were false, or skewed to create false impressions. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that we need to stop trusting people like Craze and Stalcup who say they’re on our side.
To see the complete rebuttal, go to www.archangelgroup.org.
“sensitivity training,” if that’s what it is, still has a way to go
We have touched upon LE relations with the American-Muslim communities before, but this is a classic and refers to a current case in Miami:
Quote:
In this instance, however, federal authorities showed greater sensitivity in their approach than they have in the past.
Knowing the need to build trust between lawmen and Muslims, U.S. Attorney Wilfredo Ferrer and John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami Office, made it a point to say that the allegations against a few Muslims must not taint the entire community....But arresting the imam while he was in the mosque leading daily prayers won’t deepen the bonds of trust. Imam Khan lived in a modest house around the corner and there is no indication he planned to flee.
No one advocates treating terrorist sympathizers with kid gloves, but we daresay interrupting Sunday church services to arrest a pedophile clergyman instead of waiting until after the service wouldn’t sit well with Christian congregations. Apparently, the “sensitivity training,” if that’s what it is, still has a way to go.
Link:http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/1...#ixzz1Mj1q7YsW
Please note in the UK we took time to learn too and one colleague vividly recalls being on TV after forcing entry to a small mosque, to detain suspected illegal immigrants IIRC.
Post 152 update: “sensitivity training,” if that’s what it is, still has a way to go
An update on a previous post, which was critical of a FBI arrest of an Imam and another in a mosque. Taken from a NPR article:
Quote:
What makes these particular arrests unusual is the way the local Muslim community reacted to them: The arrests didn't spark outrage or demonstrations. Instead, the way they were handled is being lauded as a model for the way law enforcement and communities should work together.
Link:http://www.npr.org/2011/07/19/137767...utreach-effort
more on FBI training and Islam
New Evidence of Anti-Islam Bias Underscores Deep Challenges for FBI’s Reform Pledge
By Spencer Ackerman
Wired Danger Room, 23 September 2011
Quote:
Following months of denials, the FBI is now promising a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials” after Danger Room revealed a series of Bureau presentations that tarred average Muslims as “radical” and “violent.”
But untangling the Islamophobic thread woven into the FBI’s counterterrorism training culture won’t be easy. In addition to inflammatory seminars which likened Islam to the Death Star and Mohammed to a “cult leader,” Danger Room has obtained more material showing just how wide the anti-Islam meme has spread throughout the Bureau.
The FBI library at Quantico currently stacks books from authors who claim that “Islam and democracy are totally incompatible.” The Bureau’s private intranet recently featured presentations that claimed to demonstrate the “inherently violent nature of Islam,” according to multiple sources. Earlier this year, the Bureau’s Washington Field Office welcomed a speaker who claimed Islamic law prevents Muslims from being truly loyal Americans. And as recently as last week, the online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces included claims that Sunni Islam seeks “domination of the world,” according to a law enforcement source.
“I don’t think anyone with half a brain would paint 1.2 billion people of any ethnic or religious persuasion with a single brushstroke,” Mike Rolince, an FBI counterterrorism veteran who started Boston’s JTTF, tells Danger Room. “Who did they run that curriculum by — either an internal or outside expert — to get some balance?”
...
