Alan Alda, what hath thou wrought?

Back when I was in my tween/early teen years I was obsessed with all things military.  Part of that included being a huge fan of the TV series MASH.  Towards the later years of the show’s run it was both in syndication and producing new episodes allowing me to catch multiple viewings ever day.  My close proximity to both the New York and Philadelphia (and let’s not forget WWOR) television markets gave me access to three, four or even on some occasions FIVE episodes to watch every day (remember, this was pre-cable TV when we ‘only’ had 10 or so channels).  It didn’t matter that I had seen every episode dozens of times and new them so well that I became discriminating about which network I’d watch the show on since some would cut slightly more of some shows in order to cram in an extra commercial, I never got bored with the show.

Fortunately, that phase passed but I wasn’t aware of how much that show influenced me until much later.  It was then, years after I had first joined that I realized that I had unwittingly internalized some of the Hawkeye Pierce character.  The Quixotic stands, the pranks, thumbing my nose at authority all kind of fit.  Now, I don’t want to make this more than it is.  I always had an anti-authoritarian streak (which, oddly enough, goes away once I have the authority) and have been what my mother would describe (generously) as a ‘mischievous’ side but when the realization hit me (I think as I was in Bagram, listening to helicopters whirl around while lounging in my Hawaiian shirt).

Allow me to provide an example of what I’m talking about.

Back in 1989, I was a newly promoted E-5 (Sergeant) and I hated the army.  That was OK, however, because my enlistment was coming to an end.  I had been accepted to attend the finest university in the country so everything was good.

Then I got word that I had been selected to attend the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC).  It was required for all new non-commissioned officers and was 30 days of all-army stuff, all the time.  Quite frankly, I wasn’t too anxious to attend because it just seemed like a pain in the ass.  Besides, I wasn’t going to do this army thing very long so what was the point of sending me?  Slots to get into this school were fairly hard to get so it seemed to make sense to send someone who could actually get something out of going.

Finally, there was a regulation saying that you couldn’t attend a military school if, upon graduation, you had less than 180 days in your enlistment.  A quick calculation revealed that if I went to this ridiculous school I would have exactly 182 days until the end of my enlistment.  Surely, my chain of command would see all of this and realize that it was senseless to waste a spot in this class on me, right?

Well, no.  They said I had to go.

I said I didn’t want to and found out that there was actually a procedure (there’s one for everything) to decline a school.  Ah, brilliant!  So I walked into the orderly room and told them that I wanted to decline going to PLDC.

‘But, why?’ The sergeant behind the desk asked.

‘Because,’ I replied ‘I’m getting out of the Army and it’s a waste for me to go.’

‘Well, ok.’  He said.  ‘But, you know you’ll have to sign a Bar to Reenlistment.’  (Which means I wouldn’t be able to reenlist in the army).

‘So, if I say I don’t want to go to this school because I’m getting out of the army, you’re saying my punishment is not being able to stay in the army?’  I was beginning to feel like I was in an Abbott and Costello routine.

‘Well, I guess you could put it like that.’

‘Where do I sign?’

Now, I should have known it wouldn’t end there.  I went about my happy way and a few days later was told the First Sergeant wanted to see me.  Uh oh.

So, I had to explain my situation again while she tried to feed me the company line.  We were getting nowhere fast, going round and round.  I explaining that I was getting out of the army and her telling me that I was on the list to go to this school (We mustn’t change the list!).  Finally, in a fit of exasperation she said:

‘You can’t say with 100% certainty that you’re getting out of the army.’

To which I replied ‘First Sergeant, I’ll sell pencils on the street before I reenlist in the army.’

And with that, she knew she was defeated.  She let me go with a ‘You’re the worst NCO I’ve ever met in my career.’  I’m sure that wasn’t true.  I had only been in the army for 3 years by that point and I had met lots of NCOs worse than me.  But still, that seemed a bit harsh.  I wasn’t incompetent, after all, just a slacker.

Shortly thereafter, fate smiled upon me.  It was time for the NCO of the Quarter boards and I was submitted to compete by the agency I worked for (I was in a unit in Washington D.C. which had strange lines of command between who you worked for and who had responsibility for you otherwise).  And after some studying, I had the pleasure of receiving an award and certificate announcing that I was, in fact, the best NCO of my unit.  Mysteriously, my First Sergeant was away the day I was given the award, which was a shame but I was comforted in the fact that my name joined the honor roll of previous winners on the wall right outside her office.

heh…

Of course, five years later I did, in fact, rejoin the army (bars to reenlistment not being worth the paper they were printed on) and so it’s a lot less clear who has ultimate bragging rights in this conflict.  But, I’ll take it as a win.

Now, had I not watched so much MASH, I probably would have just gone to the stupid school and made everyone’s like just a bit easier.  So Mr. Alda, I hope your satisfied with yourself.  I am.

Pimpin’ it Putin style

Courtesy of Reuters.  Some public relations hack (who, I suspect, is not long for our world) decided it would be a good idea for Comrade Bear to make an appearance at some Russian rap event.

He did not look particularly amused.

Kvick Tänkare

An introduction to the Swedish language…

The guy who made the great podcast about the Byzantine rulers (which you should check out if you haven’t already) has started another one about the Normans.

If you want to bash zombies in style might I recommend this sledgehammer?

Bluefin tuna continue their fast decline to extinction (courtesy of us).

No goats, no glory

So, on Veteran’s Day, we went to see The Men Who Stare at Goats.  As a movie it has its flaws.  Ewan McGregor’s character has some backstory that isn’t particularly relevant, the movie runs two narratives simultaneously (one in 1980s Ft. Bragg and the other in Iraq circa 2003) and the transitions aren’t always the smoothest, and (most importantly) towards the end the movie seems to flirt with more serious issues that creates a bit of dissonance.

That being said, we both enjoyed the film.  The storyline reminded me vaguely of the feel of a movie like Kelly’s Heroes (and don’t hold me to that, I last saw that movie more than 20 years ago and so can only say that it reminds me of the impression it gave me as a teenager).  It’s the story of a group of misfits who want to do their thing which may not be exactly what the Army wants them to do.  This may be the first movie with an Iraq War theme that manages a few laughs.

I don’t know if I’d recommend you spend $20 to go see it in the theater but I wouldn’t pass it up on cable or DVD.  It does have some very good moments.

And following what appears to be the movie meme of the decade (appropriately so, I might add), the film takes some nice shots at private military contractors who, I suspect, are on their way to becoming the go to bad guys for the next several years.  Remember, post Vietnam when it seemed that every movie had some CIA plot behind it?  Well, we’ve got somebody new to kick around now.

I’d recommend checking out the book to find out which parts are true and which the film embellished (hint:  most of the Iraq stuff wasn’t…except for the stuff about Barney).

Also, the film made me realize how totally awesome Boston was as a group and what a good song ‘More Than a Feeling’ is.  Listen again and get the air guitar ready…

 

 

Peer review

I was corresponding with an analyst going through the first module of the training program I reviewed earlier this year and the issue of peer review came up.  It remains difficult to manage since most people (either in class or at work) don’t want to make waves, and perhaps more importantly, don’t want to antagonize others and there aren’t really any perceived consequences to letting less than great analysis slip through the cracks.

There’s a feeling that it’s best to take it easy on peer review and not give the other fellow a hard time but that really misses the point.  If we assume that our work a) influences the allocation of precious resources and personnel and c) has an impact upon public safety then why would we tolerate shoddy work just to not make waves?  It would be like police officers searching subjects where one doesn’t do a thorough job.  Should the other officer just let it go because he doesn’t want to be a stickler?  Of course not.

Of course, if you’ve read even a small sampling of this blog, dear readers, you’ll know that I’m highly dubious of both a) and b) above.  Still, I’m a big believer that analysts should both know how to do such a review as well as (and perhaps even more importantly) know what to do when they get one.  Hey, I get just as defensive as the next guy when someone gives me back some of my work marked up along with questions about my superficial and slapdash analysis but I’ve since learned that in virtually every case such criticism has resulted in a stronger final product…even when my reviewer is a totally off base bone head.

Veterans Day

The next time somebody tells you animals don’t have ‘real’ feelings remember this (H/T Daily Dish).  Family and friends aren’t the only ones who miss soldiers who are away…

More here…

If this doesn’t make you either immediately seek out your dog and give him a well deserved pat (or wish you could), you clearly have no heart.

 

Fox News…the new Pravda

Really, just shocking….

And there is a debate if Fox is a ‘real’ news agency?  Where’s the evidence supporting that ridiculous proposition?

 

Intelligence Led Policing – Having another go at it.

May I recommend Jerry Ratcliffe’s (draft) article “Intelligence‐led policing: Anticipating risk and influencing action” for your perusal.  Jerry has been advocating for Intelligence Led Policing (ILP) for years here in the states which is an exciting idea.  The concept has seen more success in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand but it continues to struggle for acceptance and implementation here.

He defines ILP as:

Intelligence‐led policing is a business model and managerial philosophy where data analysis and crime intelligence are pivotal to an objective, decision‐making framework that facilitates crime and problem reduction, disruption and prevention through both strategic management and effective enforcement strategies that target prolific and
serious offenders

Ok, I’m not a huge fan of that definition.  I get it and he explains it well but it whiffs a bit too much of management speak for me and I get concerned when this sort of language gets abused by people who don’t understand it.  I prefer a more accessible definition which, while perhaps not as precise, is also from Ratcliffe and captures the main idea.  ILP therefore is made up of:

a dual role of anticipating future risks to public safety, and influencing decision‐makers so that crime prevention action can be initiated.

Whereas in a traditional law enforcement model, the system waits for a crime to happen and then works to solve it, in ILP the goal is to prevent crime.  This is because the underlying theory of ILP is that once a crime has been committed, damage has already been done, regardless of if justice is eventually served.  Hey, it may be great that they caught the guy to killed your kid doing a drive by but your kid is still dead.  How about if we work to alter conditions so the drive by doesn’t happen in the first place?  Now, this won’t work with all crime.  The postal worker who snaps is still going to do damage.  They deranged psychotic is still living in crazy town and writing his manifesto with feces while making bombs in his cellar.  Individual crime won’t be predicted but rather, patterns of criminal activity can be identified, prioritized and mitigated or prevented.

Once crime problems emerge, they linger until resolved; when organized crime groups identify a weakness they can exploit, they continue until some sort of disturbing influence is introduced; once offenders learn how to steal a particular model of vehicle, a redesign of the vehicle is often necessary; and once burglars identify a way to circumvent a security feature, they will continue to steal until new prevention mechanisms are implemented.

In addition, Jerry makes explicit an important aspect of ‘intelligence work’ in much of the U.S. law enforcement community:

All intelligence analysis, even descriptive work of past criminal activity, makes an implicit projection of a possible future criminal environment. For this statement to be true, we have to sometimes exclude one area of activity
often mislabeled as intelligence analysis; that of investigative support… irrespective of any job descriptions and titles of the individuals involved (Ratcliffe 2008a; Sheptycki 2004)…many analysts are happy to report existing crime patterns and criminal activity and make no statement of the future; however, a prediction of the future is often what decision‐makers crave in their role as risk managers with responsibility to manage resource allocation.

There is no standardization within the community (and even the word ‘community’ implies much more structure and cohesion than really exists) even regarding a shared vocabulary when it comes to intelligence and so what passes for intelligence work varies tremendously.  I would argue with his last statement that managers crave prediction of the future.  That is not my understanding after talking to analysts in various agencies.

But, he totally hits the nail on the head next:

intelligence that does not influence the thinking of a decision maker is not intelligence

Too often, intelligence is confused with information sharing.  Way too often.  In a desire to demonstrate how productive intelligence units/offices are, there’s a rush to generate ‘products’ which frequently amount to little more than cutting and pasting open source articles or plagiarizing the work of other agencies with little to no added content.  The only significant difference is the attachment of a new agency logo at the top of the product and it being redistributed.  Very little effort is spent on identifying the purpose of the product or what action it is hoped to motivate.

Most importantly, ILP is about looking beyond the metrics of arrest and seizures as the only way to measure success.  After all, if your goal is to prevent crime than arrests are really a measure of success because in most cases that means a crime has already been committed.

Getting to ILP from where we are is very difficult however.  Our multitude of agencies, all fiefdoms of their own, defending their turf and hording information simply do not play together well, even when they have their own internal act together.

A central issue for the adoption and success of intelligence‐led policing is the level of sophistication and maturity of the decision making environment. In reality, the problems are often quite profound. I’ve often been bemused by the lack of clarity regarding the decision making process in many police departments.  Mayors, police chiefs, mid‐level commanders, and individual officers often appear to have free rein to make significant decisions regarding crime policy without recourse to objective analysis of the issue, or even a partial understanding or knowledge of the problem.

The problem is those decision makers, all up and down the chain, usually think they have a good understanding of the problem and so see no reason to move to another system.  One which might threaten their position, future prospects, and institutional interests.

Forgive me for drinking the COINdinista cool-aid but here I can’t help thinking that ILP and COIN doctrine have a great deal in common.  I would argue that COIN is essentially a militarized version of ILP (I might need to develop this a bit further in another post).  Our problem is that in the military a commander can order the implementation of a doctrine throughout the force and hold his/her subordinates accountable for implementing it.  The thousands (almost 500 in a tiny state like New Jersey alone!) of police departments across the nation are not answerable to anyone in the same way.  That means widespread implementation will be a huge uphill climb and I suspect no one wants to be the first one in the pool.

 

 

Reading and listening

Three books I’d like to quickly mention…

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall: I saw McDougall on the Daily Show and heard about the Tarahumara while watching the show Last Man Standing.  This book came out during my fascination with my Vibram Five fingers (which I still think are amazing) and so may have been the target demographic for the book.  The author writes for Men’s Health and other magazines and you can definitely tell that from his writing style.  If you’re not a running enthusiast (not necessarily a hard core fanatic, just someone who enjoys running) the book might not appeal to you which is a shame because it goes off on two rather lengthy tangents that I think have a much wider appeal.  First, a discussion of how the running shoe-industrial complex came into being and has really bamboozled almost everyone with no proof that they improve a runner’s performance or prevent injury.  Secondly, is a great discussion about human evolution and an argument that humans have literally evolved to be running creatures.  Not running predators like cheetahs or wolves but rather persistence hunters.

John Dies @ the End by David Wong:  I picked this up on a whim and am very glad I did.  This book really defies any sort of summation but it is a horror-humor mix.  Allow me to quote one passage from the book to give you a feel for it:

A group of men carrying what had to be rifles stood around the vehicle, and John immediately reached out and punched the switch to kill his headlights.  Then it occurred to him that the lights suddenly going off might have been more noticeable.  So he punched them back on, thought he saw two of the men turn toward him, and then quickly turned the lights back off again.  Now he felt the stobing of his headlights was almost impossible not to notice; in fact, all of the men seemed to be looking up the hill at him.  The group might have either pursued him or raised their rifles to perforate his windshield had a gorilla riding a giant crab not leapt out of the woods and eaten two of them.

Dear readers, no amount of context would explain that paragraph.  The whole book makes you feel a bit disoriented like you’re just a bit thick and not getting it but its enjoyable enough to wait what passes for answers and resolution.  It elicited a dozen or so laughs out loud and a bunch of smirks so check it out if you want some light entertainment.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman:  I’ve collected a small library of vegetarian cookbooks since going to the dark side way back in 1997 but this may allow me to throw all of them away.  It’s absolutely brilliant covering all the cooking basics, ideas for altering recipes and addressing all those vegetables you see in the supermarket and have no idea what to do with them.  The author assumes no cooking skill on the part (hence the instructions for making a green salad) but don’t assume the simple recipes are tasteless or boring.  I’ve done 5 or so meals out of this book so far (it’s massive at 800-900 pages) and each has been a hit.  In fact, I’ve officially made my wife a fan of cauliflower, something she swore she didn’t like at all.

Failed cities

The Philadelphia Inquirer continues its special report on the failed city of Camden, NJ and I keep finding parallels between that and attempts to stabilize failed states or assist developing nations improve their standards of living.

Many aid projects in the developed world (and, increasingly China which I’m not sure is ‘officially’ part of the developed world)  are big, expensive infrastructure projects like dams, roads, resource extraction plants and such.  Such projects are usually announced with much fanfare, proclaiming millions (or billions!) going to a particular country.  Yet most of the money doesn’t go into the local economy at all.  Outside companies plan and manage the project, consultants and labor is imported.  Revenue gets funneled to corrupt local politicians or is siphoned out to the company(ies) that ran the project.  Not surprisingly, the estimated boom in economic activity doesn’t pan out and the country ends with little to show for all the money except (usually) being on the wrong end of a bad business deal.  How does Camden stack up compared with that?

The landmark 2002 Municipal Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act that put Camden under state control set aside $175 million for dozens of city projects. And none was larger, or more emblematic, than the $25 million expansion of the 10-year-old, state-owned aquarium.

Camden’s residents were told the recovery would help to lift them out of poverty. The state’s “strategic revitalization plan,” the recovery’s guide, even listed jobs as the No. 1 goal.  But it didn’t turn out that way. Instead, most of the bailout money, $99 million, was allocated to the aquarium and other “anchor” institutions: tourist attractions, universities, hospitals, and government agencies…only 23 percent of [the aquarium's] employees – 28 percent during the summer – live in Camden. Before the recovery, the percentage of Camden residents employed there was 43 percent.

At Rutgers-Camden law school, the $11 million for an expansion project helped to increase the hours of free legal work students provide city residents from about 30,000 to 40,000 hours a year…But the school’s expansion led to only one new job for a Camden resident, a custodial position.

More than 40 percent of the population is living under the poverty line, and the tax base has shrunk.

Camden is the second most dangerous city in America and the poorest medium-sized city, according to national rankings. The city of 70,390 had 1,791 violent crimes in 2008, compared to 1,711 the year before the recovery began.

The central idea to the ‘revitalization’ scheme was to develop the waterfront area of Camden with tourist attractions, high cost condos and homes and perhaps some corporate headquarters.  All of which guarantee the residents of Camden nothing but low wage, service sector jobs.  The unspoken part of these revitalization plans is that if they can ‘gentrify’ the city they can then begin to squeeze existing residents out of the area.  Where they go is unimportant so long as it’s somewhere else.  At that point they become someone else’s problem and everyone can declare victory for ‘turning around’ a depressed city.

This story reminded me of a recent Planet Money podcast in which an author of a new book called The Aid Trap argues that aid based upon the Marshall Plan would be much better than our current system.  Specifically, focus on giving money directly to local, mid-sized businesses (from 1 to several dozen employees generally) which are the real generators of economic activity.  Of course, Camden also presents an opportunity to really think outside the box.  Why does it need to still be a city?  With over 1,500 properties abandoned and large tracts of land set aside  is there room to create a modern, self sufficient city-state?  Even if we don’t go that far, how about establishing a plan which will allow the citizens of Camden to take a greater role in their own urban regeneration?