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In the space of 11 days this year, seven people were murdered in Salinas. Each killing, like the record 25 homicides the previous year, spilled from the gang warfare that this summer pushed the homicide rate in the city of 140,000 to three times that of Los Angeles. Residents retreated indoors at night, and Mayor Dennis Donohue affirmed his decision to seek help from an unlikely source: the U.S. military.Since February, combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been advising Salinas police on counterinsurgency strategy, bringing lessons from the battlefield to the meanest streets in an American city.
“This is our surge,” said Donohue, who solicited the assistance from the elite Naval Postgraduate School, 20 miles and a world away in Monterey. “When the public heard about this, they thought we were going to send the Navy SEALs into Salinas.”
In fact, the cavalry arrived in civvies, carrying laptops rather than M-16s and software instead of mortars. In this case, the most valuable military asset turned out to be an idea: Change the dynamic in the community and victory can follow.
“It’s a little laboratory,” said retired Col. Hy Rothstein, the former Army career officer in Special Forces who heads the team of 15 faculty members and students, mostly naval officers taking time between deployments to pick up a master’s degree. Their effort in Salinas counts as extracurricular and is necessarily voluntary, given the constitutional bar on the military operating within U.S. borders.
“Obviously, there are restrictions,” said Salinas Deputy Police Chief Kelly McMillin. “Not only the constitutional part of it, but just the idea we are going to have choppers fast-roping onto Alisal Street.”
‘Occupying force’
The reality turns out to be less dramatic: The thrust of the plan relies on winning the trust of people. In Salinas, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the uniformed forces patrolling “are still viewed as an occupying force,” said Police Chief Louis Fetherolf.
Source/Full Story: washingtonpost.com
Technorati Tags: Hy Rothstein
One Comment
That story’s been kicking around for a while… Or maybe I just noted it because It’s right down the road from this ‘Buffalo’s’ pasture.
The fellow I transcribe (audio) news for noted it in March and your readers may be interested:
[March 11 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: But Is It A Solution? Salinas California Has A Gang Problem So The Sheriffs Are Going To Take Anti-Terrorist Counter-Intelligence Training And Use Federal Facilities In Their War On Gangs
http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090311
There’s also a song about Salinas by a local musician after the commentary.