I went through a terrorist recognition training course in the navy. The idea was to teach you how to pick out a terrorist out of a crowd in a public setting such as a public market or crowded street so on,and how to deal with the terrorist.
That was just prior to the oil imbargo in the 70's ,so ,that was a very long time ago.
It was a military training course,- landing party activity,get in there find the trouble spot resolve the issue.
The catch 22 was if you make a mistake,you are responsible for your actions. So you were left thinking,don't make a mistake or provide yourself with a legal cover if you do.
It was the later part of 1973 and the vietnam war had just come to a offical end in Febuary of the same year.
The training course much of which seem somewhat nonsensical was a requirement in preperation for mid east deployment.
As you may or may not know, over there in Europe police agencies in localities are and have been making leaps and bounds breaking apart terrorist cells and activities. It is not their equivalent of our f-b-i or secret service that are making the leaps and bounds ,but it is simple police work-eyes ears and collecting data.And of course public support.
The training over there for police agencies is excellent and I am sure we could use some of that excellence over here.
There are indeed many factors to consider in police training these days, I mean thugs running around with aka's and high power wepons and so fourth ,crack addicts what have you.
Police field activity has changed a lot since the 70's or 80's here in Seattle. Gang activity with gang leaders out of L.A. California setting up shop here, a lot has changed.
But, when I saw that video and the way Birk went into it on the scene, I just had to recall that training course that was put togather to prepare for a potential hostel outbreak in the middle east. Indeed the 911 case scenario was part of that training. And the training was indeed flawed.Although you were being trained for something that hadn't yet occured .In the event of sort of thing,Bush called them soldiers without uniforms.
With our port authority, import all that ,eveything that comes into Seattle and is distrubited from here,all those mail order business all over the country.The mail.The goods.
Somehow I am not at all surprised the feds did not want to go too far into inadequate training procedures having to do with the Seattle police department.Yes we have quite the set up here for getting those goods shipped to locations all over America and North America- raving reviews actually.
Birk claimed he fallowed training procedure to the letter.
The question is, just what was he trained for or they ?
Because that procedure is just what was or is expected of trained military personal in a war zone upon indentifying a terrorist within a civilian crowd or crowded public area.
That objective is to take out the terrorist without hesitation without harming a single civilian in any way.The catch 22, if you were to harm a civilian ,you were subject to prosecution and if you made a mistake about the terrorist and it wasn't a terrorist, than that's murder,-at the same time if you hesitated because you were not certain or could not be,or would not be and it was a terrorist and the terrorist proceded with terrorist abjectives and you could have prevented it, that was dereliction of duty.Catch 22'sss.
Well ,Birk had a radio on his person, but apparently he choose not to check it out, or seek assistance from other officers in downtown Seattle where there are always plenty of cops .But in his two years he thought he could handle it himself.
If you saw the video ,than you saw the cowboy. The best training there is for a cop or a soldier is field training and I don't think that rouge cop did very well under instruction -he liked to do things his way-as per training procedure.
Birk was on patrol by himself most likely liked it that way-he handled it himself- he had it all down,he was sure of that. He did not and does not think he did anything wrong. He may have been of good academe student.But I'll bet he flunked out in field studies which means he was a very poor student.
Those training procedures ,that's the issue.
Remember the poisoning of the water threat here in Seattle when Bush ran for a second term ? You know the terrorist threat ,the fear tactic ?
Just a thought .
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