Bill Ardolino writing in The Long War Journal compares the state of the Fallujah Police Department, from his first embed with Fallujah Police Transition Team in January 2007 to his more recent time with them this past September.
There were hopeful signs: an increase in recruitment and new Iraqi leadership that talked the talk and fitfully began to walk the walk. But the city grew even more violent over the next two months, with attacks and casualties reaching an all-time peak in March as al Qaeda in Iraq attempted to break the will of the police. One Marine remarked on the nightmares he acquired after seeing the second-story landing of the police station covered in black bags, slick with blood and broken bodies.
But then, remarkably, things changed.
Today, police officers are the ones with the momentum, showing their faces and driving around in unarmored police trucks. Citizens have begun to leave their houses to play soccer, clean up rubble and paint streets and medians. Fallujah, and especially its police officers, display something rarely seen in January: confidence.
“When I got here, all these guys had up-armor on all the trucks,” said Sergeant Richard Arias, squad leader for the Police Transition Team’s Alpha Team. “You look at an IP truck now, it’s just the white and blue, the lights on top and that’s it. Why? Because they got the city up to a point that they don’t get shot at all the time now, and if something is going on, people go up to the police and the police will take care of it."
This is the first of two parts.
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