Repatriating Guantanamo detainees remains a troubling predicament on many levels. The expense of closing down their current home and finding a new one on the continental United States is prohibitive. It is also politically radioactive, as even the most liberal, tolerant, kindly disposed, and forgiving souls do not want detainees in their communities, prison bars not being enough of a separator. Sending them to their country of origin or declared affiliation is compounded by two difficulties. First, many nations have proven much more disposed to criticize the Guantanamo operation than to assist in dismantling it. They don't want these detainees on their turf, either. Second, we have a nagging fear that sending these people to certain countries may only speed their return to declared and undeclared battlefields where they may be more inclined than ever to spill American blood. What to do?
Take a lesson from American Street Cop 101. Transfer these people to a U.S. embassy or consulate in a Middle Eastern country likely to have spawned them. Clean them up, feed and water them to the point of satiety or languor, take a picture with a U.S. military officer shaking hands and smiling broadly. Then walk them out the gate, hand them some American greenbacks, and be heard thanking them in English and in their own language for "all your help." Wave goodbye and shut the gate.
The innocuous among these liberated detainees will be staggered but will amble off and set themselves to picking up the pieces of their lives. They will move on. The haters and hooligans will seek out their like-minded compatriots to return to the struggle. Only their reputations will have been indelibly changed. Word will travel that they are in the employ of the Americans. Who will trust them?
The more professional of the cutthroat classes so treated will size up the situation and ask for a deal. They will quickly calculate that sudden release with the trappings of being in good graces with the Americans marks them for, shall we say, negative scrutiny among their former colleagues. It should be just like a crook arrested by police only to be returned to the street a couple of hours later with money in his pocket and a fond pat on the back by a plainclothes detective everyone in the neighborhood recognizes as a cop. The crook may have kept silent and refused to rat out his buddies. But he knows no one will trust him 100% after this little bit of street theater.
- Nick Catrantzos
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Fine Tune Shooter Response
The details of the rage killings in Bingampton, NY, have yet to surface or solidify since the event occurred yesterday. (See "http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Shooter-Blocked-Door-Hostages-Hid.html">). But to a security professional, there is always room for evaluating response protocols to see where they lend themselves to fine tuning.
All accounts of the event, so far, indicate that the shooting was over within moments of police arrival on scene. This is good. Police across America have adopted the Active Shooter protocol in the aftermath of the Columbine High School carnage in Littleton, CO, some years ago. Recall that in Columbine, responding law enforcement followed standard procedure of the day, which reflected fundamental assumptions of how to make order out of chaos: set up a perimeter, minimize exposure to risk, and let the trained and equipped entry team (i.e. SWAT) lead the way in. Reasonable as this sounds, the fundamental faux pas in this procedure was that it creates a space for killers to murder more victims and to make their last stand. Hence the Active Shooter variation which now encourages the first police on site to make immediate entry to neutralize the threat. And it works,as shown at the Santee High School shooting in the San Diego area in 2000. Two cops, an off-duty officer dropping his daughter at school, and a local policeman heard the shooting, went right in, cornered the shooter in the boys' restroom and even brought him out alive. Point: they didn't wait for SWAT and thus saved more students from getting shot.
So what is wrong now? Early indications are that the police in Bingamton took hours to clear the targeted people from the shooting site. By some accounts, police even placed restraints (flex cuffs) on some of these people, watching them closely, at gun point, in an abundance of caution. It is time to update these tactics. What we see in such approaches, though conducive to officer safety, is the perpetuation of the same kind of pre-Columbine reflex that outlasted its usefulness until the Active Shooter protocol emerged as the new de facto standard. Once the shooting stops, the first priority should be making entry and getting emergency assistance for the wounded. The second priority should be assisting survivors without adding to their terror. How many rage killers have concealed themselves among the survivors to elude police in such situations? This was not a hostage-barricade situation or terrorist standoff where the shooter had other objectives and was using hostages as a means to an end. This was a situation where the killer was on a one-way shooting spree. The police need to update their tactics to take this into account.
Surely the means exist to bring people out of this kind of situation more rapidly while still capturing their contact details and identity for futher investigation. How? Bring them over to a seating area, take down their names and, if necessary, a photo with a cell phone camera. If you want to get clever, offer a cup of water and then keep the cup for fingerprints or DNA. But is it really necessary to antagonize a traumatized group by treating them all like potential assailants after the shooting has ended and the guns are recovered from the clutches of the only fatality that looks self-inflicted and has extra ammunition? Not only do such tactics hurt police public relations. They also reduce cooperation of victims who might otherwise be more forthcoming in the investigation which follows.
-- Nick Catrantzos
All accounts of the event, so far, indicate that the shooting was over within moments of police arrival on scene. This is good. Police across America have adopted the Active Shooter protocol in the aftermath of the Columbine High School carnage in Littleton, CO, some years ago. Recall that in Columbine, responding law enforcement followed standard procedure of the day, which reflected fundamental assumptions of how to make order out of chaos: set up a perimeter, minimize exposure to risk, and let the trained and equipped entry team (i.e. SWAT) lead the way in. Reasonable as this sounds, the fundamental faux pas in this procedure was that it creates a space for killers to murder more victims and to make their last stand. Hence the Active Shooter variation which now encourages the first police on site to make immediate entry to neutralize the threat. And it works,as shown at the Santee High School shooting in the San Diego area in 2000. Two cops, an off-duty officer dropping his daughter at school, and a local policeman heard the shooting, went right in, cornered the shooter in the boys' restroom and even brought him out alive. Point: they didn't wait for SWAT and thus saved more students from getting shot.
So what is wrong now? Early indications are that the police in Bingamton took hours to clear the targeted people from the shooting site. By some accounts, police even placed restraints (flex cuffs) on some of these people, watching them closely, at gun point, in an abundance of caution. It is time to update these tactics. What we see in such approaches, though conducive to officer safety, is the perpetuation of the same kind of pre-Columbine reflex that outlasted its usefulness until the Active Shooter protocol emerged as the new de facto standard. Once the shooting stops, the first priority should be making entry and getting emergency assistance for the wounded. The second priority should be assisting survivors without adding to their terror. How many rage killers have concealed themselves among the survivors to elude police in such situations? This was not a hostage-barricade situation or terrorist standoff where the shooter had other objectives and was using hostages as a means to an end. This was a situation where the killer was on a one-way shooting spree. The police need to update their tactics to take this into account.
Surely the means exist to bring people out of this kind of situation more rapidly while still capturing their contact details and identity for futher investigation. How? Bring them over to a seating area, take down their names and, if necessary, a photo with a cell phone camera. If you want to get clever, offer a cup of water and then keep the cup for fingerprints or DNA. But is it really necessary to antagonize a traumatized group by treating them all like potential assailants after the shooting has ended and the guns are recovered from the clutches of the only fatality that looks self-inflicted and has extra ammunition? Not only do such tactics hurt police public relations. They also reduce cooperation of victims who might otherwise be more forthcoming in the investigation which follows.
-- Nick Catrantzos
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
