COIN training

[Jedburgh]

...I think the rotations with the border patrol and SWAT teams would have much less value than simply integrating our personnel with a good beat cop or with an anti-gang task force...

...A cop brings intuition based on intimate knowledge of the local area’s geography, people, culture, and history. If he is truly integrated in the community, he’ll know where the problem areas are based on his sources and his sixth sense (which can only be developed over time)...

I used to believe that way as well. Now that I have been working for a while with a county-wide Joint Gang Task Force in central CA, I have changed my mind.

All of the individuals on the TF (with the sole exception of myself) have lived and worked in the area most, if not all, of their lives. They certainly have an intimate knowledge of much of the area - yet still have a surprising degree of ignorance regarding large chunks of the county, despite having lived here so long.

"Sources" are a serious problem. Good sources within the communities where the Hispanic street gangs thrive are almost non-existent. And I found the way in which the TF handled CIs (confidential informants) amateurish at best, and the manner in which they conduct surveillance even worse. The repercussions of compromise are far less serious than in the COIN environment, and they take it that much less seriously.

Field Interviews, which I see as having great potential for both info-gathering and a step in the process of recruiting CIs, are done in a perfunctory fashion, not going any further than filling out the boxes on an FI Card. The numbers of those are reported on daily stats, and that seems to be the only real purpose - a measure of activity. Interviewing techniques as a whole, in the context of professional methodology, are crude to non-existent.

The execution of parole/probation searches, which do result in a number of arrests for various violations, are done in a overly harsh manner which tends to alienate the other members of the household. A slightly softer approach can accomplish the same thing, but provides a better environment for conducting interviews of family members/associates - not to mention the all-important spotting potential CIs. They have yet to learn similar lessons to what we've learned the hard way in-theater - again, because the repercussions of the mistakes are much less severe.

I could go on. All in all, I now feel that having soldiers spend time with a unit like this would be counter-productive, and undo the few good TTPs in which we are already training them. I would perhaps make an exception for unique anti-gang units, with a long history and broad, in-depth intel support - such as those in LA or NY. But the extremely limited number of such units even more severely restricts the ability to provide such an opportunity to any potentially effective number of soldiers.