Photo By Staff Sgt. Christina Turnipseed | Leaders of the 709th Military Police Battalion, 18th MP Brigade discuss first hand...... read more read more
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GRAFENWOEHR, Germany – Military police from across the German footprint attended a conference on Sept. 28 and 29, designed to codify best practices in host nation police development.
Several units of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, 18th MP Brigade, 709th MP Battalion gathered in Grafenwoehr, Germany to learn more about how to assess, develop, and measure the progress of host nation police forces in any environment.
As part of the Battalion’s Leader Development Program, leaders from the 92nd MP Company near Kaiserslautern, the 527th MP Co. from Hohenfels, the 529th MP Co. from Wiesbaden, the 554th MP Co. from Stuttgart and the 615th MP Co. from Grafenwoehr joined the Battalion leadership at Grafenwoehr to leverage the experiences of the last decade and gain new insight from junior leaders unencumbered with the Iraq and Afghanistan perspective.
Leaders of the conference acknowledged that a lot of resources are available on “lessons learned” about host nation police development. However, a comprehensive and practical training support package describing how to assess and develop host nation police forces in any deployed environment is not yet available.
According to 709th MP Bn. officials, “There is a lot of published information on experiences and best practices that units used while developing police in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is no comprehensive overview of where to start based on the varied abilities of the police, the development trajectory, and how to assess progress in developing forces. This is particularly relevant given the NATO Strong emphasis in USAREUR.”
“We might be going to a country where they may have all these assets already or we might be going to a place like Afghanistan where we would have to build from the ground up,” said Capt. Michael J. Neu II of the 709th MP Co. and native of San Antonio, Texas. “But this, I think, establishes a baseline and has criteria on what needs to happen as the police progress in all domains of functionality.
The end state for leaders across the 709th MP Bn. is to have a comprehensive product that provides units the strategy they need to assess and develop police forces in any deployed area.
“What we are working on now,” said 1st Lt. Hannah Miller, 615th MP Co. platoon leader and native of Annandale, Virginia, “are assessment tools so if anyone in the battalion deploys, and needs to assess a host nation’s police force, we will have a baseline.”
“We will know where the police are at the start and what other steps need to be taken to get them to a higher level,” Miller added.
On the first day, facilitators of the conference started by framing the problem, defining expectations, and informing the leaders that group presentations would take place on the 29th, to included final discussion on best practices.
Leaders were split into groups and were expected to collaborate and define issues according to their DOTMLPF domain (i.e. doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership/education, personnel, and facilities). Each group had to establish a way to assess the police force in their specific domain, how to outline that progression, what tasks to train and/or systems to implement at each level, and what can be used as measures of performance/effectiveness.
Group one, the doctrine analysis group, examined the historical policing model in the country and how the police operate to prevent violence and crime and protect the population. In general they looked at how to evaluate if tactics, techniques, and procedures were appropriate for the threat.
Group two, training analysis group, examined how police are prepared from basic training, advanced individual training, various types of unit training/continued education, to see if improvement can be made to offset capability gaps.
Group three concentrated on organization analysis examining how a police force is organized as an effective force. It discussed different organizational structures and capabilities that can be developed to solve a capability gap.
Group four, the material analysis group, examined the police force to see if they had the ability to equip, maintain, and support policing activities.
Group five focused on leadership and education examining how leaders are prepared and their overall professional development. This is separate and distinct by preparing individuals and establishing credible units through its leadership.
Over the two-day conference, each group found solutions, built a PTT strategy for their group, presented their proposed strategy, critiqued each other, and discussed the elements involved to implement their proposed solutions.
“The intent of the conference was to identify through the doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership/education, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) lens what is required to assess, rate, and then progress nations in the different domains if we were to go anywhere and execute host nation police building,” said Maj. Ranjini Danaraj, the 709th MP Bn. executive officer and native of Redmond, Washington.
| Date Taken: | 11.10.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 11.10.2015 11:02 |
| Story ID: | 181572 |
| Location: | GRAFENWOEHR, DE |
| Web Views: | 56 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 709th MP BN leaders learn to build police, by SSG Christina Turnipseed, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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