The case for a Policing Reform Incubator: Experienced veterans working alongside police and communities
Lessons from abroad can dramatically change American policing, and help the communities they serve. Please bring our seasoned veterans into this conversation.
A Brief Introduction.
This article is intended to serve as a short open letter to America’s police and political leadership, in particular at the City as well as National level. My name is John Kirbow, a longtime NYC resident from Atlanta GA and many places in between. I write this as a veteran of two warzones and a strong background in cross-cultural engagement, human factors on the battlefield, local area analysis, psychological operations, Special Warfare, foreign languages, and working alongside civil affairs and counterinsurgency. I think trained, seasoned veterans working with police and local communities can save lives — police and civilian alike.
The aim of bringing seasoned veterans into this issue would not be to further militarize the police, but to essentially demilitarize and specialize, in a way that makes things better and safer for both the police that walk the streets and the people they are sworn to serve. This would not remove the obvious need for well-armed, violence-ready response when it’s truly needed, nor reduce the quality of training police have to navigate potentially dangerous situations — rather, it would increase this training across police departments everywhere, while also diversifying how we as a society respond to a multitude of social problems best served by a range of skillsets outside of traditional police protocol.
Returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been seeing a disconnect for decades between the valuable lessons and skills they learn abroad in safely dealing with human environments, and the never-ending mistakes and frictions that keep occurring here at home between our police and our own population. It is time we take a look at how two decades of experience and hard lessons abroad can help us truly change policing across America — on a deep enough level to make a difference, from sound recruiting, vetting, and sustained training, to tactics and ways of engaging local communities. As well as finding alternatives to policing when possible, and equipping police with specialized teams that can safely work alongside them when needed. We adopted the latter approach quite often in warzones, amidst socially complex environments with enormous language and cultural divides, lots of body armor and gear, and sometimes in heat upwards of 120 degrees. We can do it here at home. This wider rethinking of policing models can save lives on all ends of the Blue Divide. It is a conversation — a bridge — between our war vets and our police forces that needs to happen.
So much of the valuable lessons and skills we’ve developed since 9–11 actually show a remarkable area of common ground and shared ideals between those pushing for change, and many police who see this need as well. It is time to make this a convergence of public conversation: Creating specialized teams adapted for a wide range of social problems. Bringing the tools of community engagement, listening, and participation. Embracing a stakeholder model of neighborhoods, which includes trained civil liaison teams who can map out the local voices, sentiments, and grievances, attaining the true ‘pulse of the area’ often unseen by city or town officials. More support for ongoing training and better selection of officers. Overall, this Open Letter of sorts seeks to build a dialogue between war vets, police, and cities, while bringing local residents on board as well.
The core idea behind ‘defund the police’ has been to roll back the excesses of policing while investing instead in social services that can better address much of these frictions. Imagine if this can happen in a way that works harmoniously with productive policing, in a way that would strengthen its ideal purpose and its quality while removing many of its problems and excesses. For example, it would do this by investing in quality continuous training, and creating specialized ‘civil terrain teams’ and other social liaisons to compliment policing while reducing unproductive frictions with locals. This proposal is greatly complimented by the idea of investing in communities and reducing needless collisions between police and civilians, as well as fostering relationships between the local authorities and residents through a participatory engagement process.
Upfront disclaimers and key points.
I outline this idea (#8 above) in more detail in ‘The Nonlethal Weapon Proposal’, and in articles soon to be released, as well as in my 2016 article titled Non-Lethal Weapon: How Lessons Learned in War Can Make Peace at Home. I encourage readers to look over it as well.
Summary
I have long proposed a collaboration between veterans with counterinsurgency skills and experience (in particular, from Special Operations and Civil Affairs backgrounds), and police leadership across America. This would be, tentatively speaking, a ‘Training and Civil Engagement Incubator’, focusing on areas where our veterans can help reform the system. It can be called whatever name is most fitting, but its purpose would be to evolve how policing works based on a more science-grounded understanding of human behavior as well as two decades of post-9–11 experience in working with local populations in complex environments abroad.
Something I want our officials to understand about veterans is that we will not let this country fail. We can help, we are here to offer what we learned in training and abroad. While our military’s main mission is warfighting, many of our endeavors abroad — across the full spectrum of conflict and peace operations — involve a number of civil engagement and peacemaking skills. In the warzone, there are ways to engage the population and avoid violence, which involves approaches and skills that are essential in a counterinsurgency environment. If there is one place to put our peacemaking skills to use, it is in working with our police system to identify problematic areas and help fix them.
Key Areas of Reform and Innovation.
The Selection and Training Model needs to be more like our elite military. Words echoed in the ‘SOF (Special Operations Forces) Truths’ — which I encountered and took to heart during selection and training at Camp Mackall, part of Fort Bragg’s JFK Special Warfare Center and School — are beautifully simple yet enormously important and profound:
Humans are more important than hardware.
Quality is more important than quantity.
Special Operations Forces (SOF), such as Special Forces, Rangers, SEALs, and others, have long advocated the total warrior concept, where one’s mind, physical abilities, and personality (including their judgment and maturity) are all important. We must advocate the total warrior concept, where one’s mind, physical ability and personality (including their judgment and maturity) are all important. Integrity, honor and respect for fellow human beings are intangibles that our elite soldiers are expected to embody, as should all police officers.
Police need full access to quality mental health resources. More funding should go to strengthening the support system for police through a VA-style system focused on mental health and PTSD. This is so integral to helping our police as well as the communities they serve. We should invest in our police as human beings — and their wellbeing — the same way our military insists in investing in the wellbeing of our soldiers. Mission capability and ‘Readiness’ as we call it demands that we take care of the soldier. We need the budgets for police to be redirected into investing in their mental health and access to services, due to the unique nature of their job — something I as a vet can appreciate. Everyone will be better off if we not only recruit the right people, but give them access to the right resources.
Police Departments need Red Teams. In the military and defense sectors, we have a term for helping organizations see their blind spots and exposing their unbeknownst weaknesses: we call it Red Teaming. A Red Team will try to expose areas where you are vulnerable, where you can make mistakes that will lead to unintended consequences. A system of Red Teaming needs to be around to assist every police department on where their gaps in training and protocol are-such as the smartest and safest ways to respond to a line of protesters without unnecessary escalation, when not to initiate aggression, and when to try and talk with someone in the crowd to diffuse the tensions or assure them that the police are trying to avoid conflict if at all possible. If this were applied in Ferguson, for example, the decades of deep divide and the abusive relationship between predatory policing and poor neighborhoods of color would have been better noted and a red flag would be raised on the harm and danger of continuing such practices. People could have advised the department on the need for a campaign of community liaison and outreach to intently listen to local residents.
Police need a nation-wide hub for exchanging knowledge on tactics, procedures, and best practices. This would be a way for everyone to look more closely at how things go wrong as well as how to minimize loss and mitigate risk and uncertainty. How to avoid civilian casualties; how to liaise with a local town and its residents; or how to engage the key leaders of a political or social movement in a proactive way, so that our operations on the ground are proactive, not reactive.
Civil Terrain Teams (CTTs). Embedded cultural and behavioral experts who can foster relations with the area, diffuse conflict, and train police on avoiding certain missteps. Based on the concept of Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and partly on our Civil Affairs Teams (CATs), these could be seasoned military or police veterans from SOF and CA backgrounds working alongside cultural and behavior experts. Seasoned police could receive advanced training as part of CTTs as well, giving the force a stronger liaison capability with the areas they are in.
Partnering with the Brazilian Jujitsu community. BJJ is one of the best ways to avoid violence and prevent detainees and suspects from getting hurt. The US Army has long worked with the Gracies and others to incorporate Jujitsu into its Combatives curriculum. Proficiency in Jujitsu, while quite dangerous when put to its full use, is one of the best ways to avoid violence, minimize the need for blunt force techniques, and prevent detainees from getting hurt. Due to the sense of purpose and focus and self-development it gives, BJJ has been known to be a great tool for people’s physical and mental health, even stopping some people from considering suicide at times. It can also be used to resolve confrontations with minimal violence while keeping police officers safe. Simply put, Jujitsu saves lives, and it should be scaled up in precincts all across America. Police departments — and detained suspects — deserve no less.
My Open Letter to our Police and Political Leadership
Seeing our own country become a warzone is soul-crushing. It breaks our hearts to see the realities that people of color face and the disillusionment and outrage they feel, as well as the growing break in trust between our citizens and the police that are purposed with the role of protecting them. It not only undercuts the type of country we have sworn to fight for and protect, but it costs lives on both sides of the blue divide, by eroding the relationship between police and citizen. This must be addressed once and for all. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have many of the skills to help address this problem, and we can be a multiplier for how quickly we as a nation accomplish this. We ask that leaders across police and political circles consider what we have to offer this conversation. Let us continue to serve the country we love. We possess among us two decades of counterinsurgency and post-9–11 experience relevant to peacemaking here at home.
Veterans of Special Operations Forces (SOF), Civil Affairs, and other backgrounds possess a repository of knowledge and experience vastly underappreciated (and mostly unknown) by our society. We possess untapped skills which are increasingly relevant to the ‘American battlefield’ of social unrest we currently see. In many cases, we can effectively engage local populations; deescalate certain types of tensions and unrest; assess the pulse of the local area; liaise with the local culture and understand grievances; and find ways to build bridges of understanding, rapport and mutual respect. As mentioned, a partnership between veterans and police at the highest levels would take some of the most relevent lessons and insights of working with civilian populations abroad and apply it as appropriate to policing here in the US — not towards violence, but towards peace, de-escalation, and the prevention of conflict and tensions whenever possible. We would work together to build a better paradigm, across the entire country, for how police train and operate in certain areas of their job, based on
o Mentorship, data-driven feedback, and continuous learning.
o Best practices & lessons learned from years abroad in complex, dangerous environments.
o A training and operations paradigm focused on avoiding conflict and violence whenever possible, and on working productively with the local community.
o Working with key leaders and community influencers who can help mitigate problems rather than allow them to boil over
Such a nation-wide partnership between veterans and police makes logical sense on many levels. Police at all levels, from leadership to boots-on-ground, may be more receptive to listening if we can foster a true conversation that breaks through the blue wall. A partnering may be a good starting point to get the right conversation going. When we respect and empower local communities — and understand how to do this as well as teach it to others — we are all more likely to win.
Many veterans of SOF, Civil Affairs, and others, want to continue to serve here at home, and fight for a more safe, free and just society for ourselves, our fellow Americans of all colors, and our children and future Generations. We want a society where people of color feel as safe and respected by our system of policing as any other group. We want a society where the sacred bond of trust between the police and the citizens is respected. At all costs, we want to avoid the grave errors and mistakes of devolving into a warzone-like environment of insurgency, riots and a widening divide between the population and the authorities — a war that I promise no government wants to face. We can avoid this and move forward, together. Police can learn to work alongside local communities, and our seasoned veterans can help. We ask that this proposal be heard, and that this conversation be given a fair hearing in our national discourse.
Respectfully,
John A Kirbow