A tough-talking, muscular Los Angeles police sergeant steadily rattled off tips to a young Marine riding shotgun as they raced in a patrol car to a drug bust: Be aware of your surroundings. Watch people’s body language. Build rapport.

Marine Lt. Andrew Abbott, 23, took it all in as he peered out at the graffiti-covered buildings, knowing that the lessons he learned recently in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods could help him soon in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“People are the center of gravity and if you do everything you can to protect them, then they’ll protect you,” he said. “That’s something true here and pretty much everywhere.”

Abbott was among 70 Camp Pendleton Marines in a training exercise that aims to adapt the investigative techniques the LAPD has used for decades against violent street gangs to take on the Taliban more as a powerful drug-trafficking mob than an insurgency.

The Marines hope that learning to work like a cop on a beat will help them better track the Taliban, build relationships with Afghans leery of foreign troops and make them better teachers as they try to professionalize an Afghan police force beset by corruption.

The troops believe they can learn valuable lessons from the LAPD, which has made inroads into communities after highly publicized abuses, from the videotaped beating of Rodney King to corruption in an anti-gang unit.

“Their role is to win the hearts and minds of the community and that’s what they did,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Brendan Flynn, who also works as a Los Angeles police officer and will be deployed to help train Afghan police.

The weeklong exercise — unbeknownst to the public — involved Marines dressed in jeans and T-shirts observing drugs busts, witnessing prostitution arrests and even following a murder case. It was the largest group of Marines to embed with the city’s officers.

Abbott, of Long Island, N.Y., rode with Sgt. Arno Clair, a 16-year veteran with salt-and-pepper hair who swims up to a mile a day.

During their afternoon together, police handcuffed a bus driver — moments after he was caught by an undercover officer with $25,000 worth of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex in a south-central Los Angeles neighborhood long plagued by violent gangs.

The tattooed suspect wearing an earring and baggy shorts seemed a world away from the ragtag, Kalashnikov-toting Taliban fighters, just as the streets of south-central Los Angeles are from the dusty villages of mud-brick houses in Afghanistan.

But in many ways, police in Los Angeles’ crime-ridden neighborhoods use the same skills that Marines say could help them.

Marines are in charge of training Afghanistan’s army and police but often have no police experience themselves. Their success in building effective police forces is considered key to stabilizing the country and allowing foreign troops to withdraw.

Marines also are changing their approach, realizing that marching into towns to show force alienates communities. Instead, they are being taught to fan out with interpreters to strike up conversations with truck drivers, money exchangers, cell phone sellers and others.

The rapport building can net valuable information that could even alert troops about potential attacks.

Marines can gather intelligence by picking up the notebooks, receipts and other papers left behind in raids that could provide insight into the opium business the Taliban uses to buy their weapons, Afghan expert Gretchen Peters said.

She told Marines before the Los Angeles patrols that they should follow the lead of some Afghans who have gone from using the term “mujahadeen” or “holy warrior” to identify the Taliban to calling them gangsters.

That, she said, shows how fed up the villagers are with being extorted by them and calling them gangsters will win them over.

“Think of the Taliban as the Sopranos in turbans,” she said. “I think essentially they’re criminals.”

Peters, who has written extensively about the Taliban being a criminal network, has been talking to troops across the country before they deploy to Helmand Province, a top opium-producing region.

Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world’s opium, the main ingredient of heroin, and is also the leading global supplier of hashish. Last year, opium seizures soared 924 percent because of better cooperation between Afghan and international forces.

In the end, the police training mission is what will win the war, said Marine 2nd Lt. Jared Siebenaler, 24, of Hastings, Minn., who spent the past six months training police in Afghanistan. But he acknowledged their police mission faces enormous challenges.

Siebenaler said many recruits tested positive for drugs, arriving to work high on hashish if they came at all. Supervisors were believed to be skimming money off their officers’ measly salaries. One force had men from two tribes who could barely stand each other.

And then there’s the language barrier between Marines and the Afghan police.

But like most police work, getting past issues of trust and cultural difference begins with a brief encounter on a street.

As Clair and Abbott cruised past a row of dilapidated homes, the police sergeant told him to notice how a person’s walk and dress changes from street to street, and whether children are playing or hurrying by.

Crime here increases with summer’s heat, he said, encouraging Abbott to identify the violence-trigger in Afghanistan, such as at the end of the poppy harvest.

“What’s happenin,’ man?” Clair said, waving his hand out his window to a man who looked away in disgust.

“If they are on the fence about police and they say ‘hi’ back, then at least we’ve dealt with that issue, and if they don’t, then at least I know who I’m dealing with around here,” he told Abbott.

Abbott, following Clair’s example, waved to a woman in the street. She waved back.

Via: NBC

MILAN — Italian news reports say that a military police general was convicted of smuggling drugs during the course of an investigation and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The news agencies ANSA and Apcom said Giampaolo Ganzer was sentenced on Monday after being convicted of bringing heroin into Italy in the course of two operations led by the carabinieri investigative unit that he headed in Milan.

Prosecutors alleged that a group of officials in the military police unit had organized a drug trafficking ring with the aim of getting rich.

Ganzer was among 14 people convicted in the case, while four were acquitted. In addition to jail time, Ganzer was fined euro65,000 ($82,000).

Source: MSNBC

Kyrgyzstan’s interim government has given police and military forces shoot-to-kill orders in an extreme measure taken to halt the ethnic unrest in the south of the country.

A government decree on Saturday authorized lethal force to repel attacks against the authorities, stop the destruction of government and private property, and protect civilians, AFP reported.

The Kyrgyz government also partially mobilized the country’s military forces as the ethnically divided former Soviet republic is faced with mounting violence between Uzbek and Kyrgyz groups.

“If we do not take opportune and effective measures, the unrest could become much more serious and descend into a regional conflict,” warned a statement announcing the mobilization.

Clashes broke out in the main southern city of Osh overnight Thursday and into Friday when Kyrgyz and Uzbeks engaged in running street battles and set cars and buildings on fire, prompting the government to impose a curfew and state of emergency.

A second state of emergency was soon declared in the southern city of Jalalabad due to “spreading instability.”

Escalating violence, looting, and fighting have forced thousands of Uzbek women and children to flee their homes to the nearby border with Uzbekistan amid warnings of a humanitarian crisis in the Central Asian republic.

Earlier, interim President Roza Otunbayeva appealed to the Russian government to militarily intervene to quell the unrest that has left 75 people dead and over 1,000 injured in the past three days.

But Moscow ruled out sending troops into Kyrgyzstan, saying Russia did not yet “see the conditions” to participate in resolving what it described as an internal conflict.

Garbage police are planning to fine people £1,000 if they fail to ­recycle their ­trash.

The pilot scheme would involve ­hiring two enforcement officers at a cost of £45,000.

If the plan is given the green light on Thursday then the officers would be used to rummage through black bin bags of ­residents who fail to put out ­recycling boxes.

They could then hand out fines ranging from £75 to £1,000 if they ­uncover any recyclable paper, cans or glass.

Strategic director for neighbourhoods Graham Sims outlined plans for the Recycling For All ­pilot scheme in a report to Bristol City ­Council’s Cabinet.

He said: “If after these steps the ­households are still not participating, the waste ­doctors will then need to check the refuse bins for recycling ­materials.”

The Council’s executive member for the ­environment Gary Hopkins said: “There are a number of people who say: ‘I’m not going to ­recycle.’ Frankly we have to ­tackle that.”

However, the Govern­ment is likely to act this week to stamp out taxing rubbish and has pledged to end snooping on householders.

VOUCHERS for M&S, McDonald’s, Costa ­Coffee, Coca-Cola and ­Cineworld – worth up to £135 – are being used to reward people who fill their ­recycling bins in the Royal Borough of ­Windsor and Maidenhead, Berks.
[Via:dailystar]

At the St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson, Nevada this past Monday, a very unusual and terrifying scene took place that left nearly all its participants in shock — both out of fear and genuine bewilderment as to how safety planners could be so stupid.

That’s because last Monday, an off-duty police officer stormed into the hospital’s Sienna campus, where the most sick patients are cared for, and pointed a gun at staff. He then ordered as many as 10 nurses down a hallway and into a room, according to a local report.

It all turned out to be a “safety” drill gone horribly wrong.

“Just last year, Henderson police shot and killed an armed, hostile man in the emergency room,” The Las Vegas Sun noted. “So it would make sense that security and emergency preparedness have been a focus at the hospital.

“But in Monday’s incident, which occurred in a unit that houses the hospital’s sickest patients, nurses, patients and their families did not know it was a drill, said Renee Ruiz, organizer of the California Nurses Association, which represents staff at the hospital.”

It was only after nurses were herded into the room that the officer explained the motivation for his dramatic rouse.

Andy North, the hospital’s director of public policy, told the paper they’d engaged in an effort to make drills “as realistic as possible.” He claimed staff should have been told ahead of time.

The officer’s name was not released.

The hospital’s media release page does not address anything related to the drill and the incident was largely ignored by other area media.