Adopt A Police Station
Major Dan Sullivan USMC
A letter from Major Sullivan to his Mom explaining a problem with supplies for the local Police stations. They are looking for any old gear that some stations may have and not using.
Mom,
I know most of our family friends that were cops in the NY area are long retired but I had an idea. We've just stood up one of the first "functioning" police stations in Al Anbar Province, in the town of Saqlaweya. This particular group seem like pretty good guys. We have a squad of Marines and a squad of Iraqi Army guarding the police station because the terrorists will blow it up/over run it if we leave. They aren't yet strong enough to be completely independent but they want to do some good. Unlike the Army that come from other parts of the country, these are local guys that are really hanging it out there. We have a reserve Sgt that is an NYPD patrolman in real life working with them, teaching them basic police stuff and they are actually doing foot patrols. The good Sgt is doing it because the IPLOs (the international police advisor teams from the UN) are worse than useless. The people in the local area love the police, unlike the Iraqi Army. The terrorists hate them because they mean the beginning of normalcy, stability and legitimacy for the local government, which is why you keep hearing about police stations getting blown up. OK, hears the rub. I put quotation marks around functioning because these guys only get paid intermittently, they have no cars, no computers or type writers, no office supplies, no furniture, no electricity in there building, not even hand cuffs, nightsticks, belts, radios ... nothing except a uniform and a Glock 9mm shoved in there waistband (in a country where most of the criminals carry RPG and Dragonov Sniper rifles).
We haven't been allotted this stuff to give them. The govt in Baghdad has been given resources and with the oil pumping they will soon have more of there own. The logic is to make them make their system work instead of doing everything for them, which in the long term makes sense but in the short term ... it is tough when you are the guy looking them in the eye and trying to inspire them to keep the streets free of crime. In the mean time of course, we have the ever resourceful Gunnery Sergeant Boutin scrounging things like used furniture and stuff from around the Coalition HQ Camp and our own. The company commander up there is a farm boy from Arkansas that actually has a veterinarian friend sending him some non-perishable vet meds and equipment so the Police Chief can gain credibility with the locals by escorting the local vet around to inoculate their live stock every week.
But one thing we can't come up with is police gear. And I don't mean anything fancy (belts, handcuffs, night sticks, pepper spray, holsters for Glocks, which don't fit in ours). For these guys it would be huge, when you have nothing even little things seem big (and it would really help our guys gain credibility). That's where my brain storm came in. I figured an outfit like NYPD (or Suffolk County) is big enough to have some kind of PR office. If I knew somebody there, I'd pitch this as an "adopt a police station" kind of thing. This would be low hanging fruit for them in the sense that even stuff they were going to throw out any way, would probably be serviceable by developing-world standards. All this assumes people back home still give a crap, looking at events on the Mall in D.C. it seems that the desire to walk away and leave these guys in the lurch continues to grow. Do you know anyone you could bounce this off of? It's a long shot but, it doesn't hurt to ask. Other than that, the Marines are doing great and life is good. I miss you guys terribly of course but staying motivated.
Love Dan
