October 25th, 2007 by zen

BRIEF CONTEMPLATIONS

I attended an interdisciplinary-but-history centered conference on Monday that included some presentations by well regarded scholars like David Kyvig and Artemus Ward. However, I was most intrigued by a sociologist who was recounting the evolution of CAPS, which is Chicago’s community policing program. In essence, CAPS is COIN doctrine carried out by civil agencies. Anyone who has read John Nagl or David Kilcullen or follows the tenets of the 4GW school, will immediately recognize the premises of CAPS, though my intuition is that the OODA Loop has been much slower with the City of Chicago than it has been even with CENTCOM.

Amusingly, the professor, a younger, urban hipster-type female, reacted with visible anxiety when I pointed out the similarities with counterinsurgency doctrine.

Posted in academia, COIN, historians, ideas, intellectuals, personal | 8 comments

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  1. A.E.:

    October 25th, 2007 at 7:32 am

    Lol! That’s pretty funny.

  2. tequila:

    October 25th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    COIN presupposes an armed enemy entity which is subject to extralegal actions such as being shot on sight or imprisoned without charge. I don’t blame her if she objected to the conflation of the two, especially since one of the major negative trends in policing in the past twenty years has been the unnecessary proliferation of the paramilitary model of policing, which is actually the opposite of what CAPS is about.

  3. deichmans:

    October 25th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    Tequila,

    While I agree that your description can describe “COIN”, I also believe there are other, softer forms of both insurgency and counterinsurgency. To ascribe the stigma of “[shooting] on sight” to insurgency is, in my opinion, too extreme.

  4. tequila:

    October 25th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

    The point is that COIN involves many things that would be clearly illegal in the civilian context. It is still warfare, even if certain methods approximate police work. Conflating the two sounds good but in the end constitutes a faulty comparison.

    There is also the highly problematic conflation of common criminals with politically motivated insurgents. The latter is essentially missing from most civilian criminal contexts but the existence of such is the most critical element of COIN warfare – without it there is no insurgency to fight.

  5. Fabius Maximus:

    October 25th, 2007 at 11:58 pm

    Given the differences between domestic crime and insurgencies, many aspects of FM 3-24 COIN theory can apply to police work. Since most of this is untested, or rather so far unsuccessfully tested, some trials in the easier domestic crime arena might give us valuable information.

    I suspect that much of COIN theory can *only* be applied in a domestic area (that is, against domestic insurgents). For example, the level of local knowledge required is beyond that America forces will likely have in Germany, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan.

  6. deichmans:

    October 26th, 2007 at 1:43 am

    Good points, FM. In fact, at USJFCOM J9, we used to cite OPERATION JUST CAUSE (Panama 1989) as the ideal “Rapid Decisive Operation”. Of course, we had nearly 90 years of “Operational Net Assessment” and infrastructure intelligence to support our operations….

  7. mark:

    October 27th, 2007 at 2:27 am

    Gentlemen,

    Forgive my delay in responding. Work had me buried in making PPT slides.

    AE,

    Gracias!

    tequila,

    Probably it would have been more accurate if I had said “operational principles” or “tactics” rather than ” premises”. CAPS does not have a paramilitary feel to it but instead a Sys Admin flavor – connecting to the community, integrating the police into the social network of neighborhoods.

    That being said. Certain Chicago street gangs have the internal discipline, organizational complexity and adaptive capabilities to make them comparable to organized crime networks or insurgencies. Not all of them but some gangs are exceptionally sophisticated in their activities.

    Shane,

    Hey brother! Nice points.

    Hi FM,

    You’re right – local knowledge is being leveraged by police. Some Illinois towns (Elgin, Rockford) actually buy houses and create 24/7 “police residences” in troubled neighborhoods.

  8. A.E.:

    October 28th, 2007 at 5:28 am

    I think SysAdmin is a better comparison than COIN…although FM would probably say that SysAdmin can only work domestically..