Officials in Washington frequently tout improvements in the Iraqi security forces. But in the everyday world of the al Bayaa police station, where Maj. Luay Majeed is a senior criminal investigator, the police acknowledge that they are still no match for Iraq's epidemic of lawlessness.
"They're outgunned, they're outnumbered, and they definitely don't have the training they need, in my opinion," said Staff Sgt. Michael Ashcraft, who is part of a military police company assigned to the station.
The al Bayaa station, Baghdad's largest, covers an area home to 750,000 people. There are about 950 policemen on the rolls. There are just nine investigators.
They have no computers. Cases are recorded in paper files. They buy pens and paper with their own money. When the electricity goes off, they sometimes read by candlelight.
Under Saddam, the police ranked lowest on the security pecking order, far below the intelligence services and the military. Salaries were next to nothing. Bribe taking and torture were rampant.
Most of today's police were in the department under the previous regime. And while some of them have been through U.S.-sponsored courses on civil rights, it's clear that not much has changed.
In the last year, hundreds of police officers have been implicated in off-duty crimes, on-duty abuses and anti-coalition attacks, Iraqi prosecutors and American officials say.
Even the leaders, vetted by U.S. forces, cling to the old ways.
"When I know he is guilty of murder, and he refuses to confess, what should I do, give him a Rani juice?" asked Bayaa's senior commander, a blunt-talking police veteran named Col. Khaldoun Abdullah, referring to a popular brand of canned fruit drink.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9208441.htm
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