Community Policing – Lessons from the Vietnam War

There is no doubt that the job of a law enforcement officer is fraught with peril.  As an officer leaves roll call at the beginning of each shift, there is always the nagging question in the back of his/her mind, “Will I survive and return to my family?”  In the collective consciousness of much of the general public, this peril seems greater today than ever before.   Because of the perception of the “thin blue line” as the law-abiding public’s only protection from the “monsters” in our midst, the American people have willingly surrendered many of their civil liberties.  There are many who staunchly defend the police, even to the point of excusing obvious instances of police brutality and overreaction.  Some argue that the perils faced by law enforcement fully justify anything the police perceive as necessary and appropriate.  But, is that peril greater today than in the past, as many perceive?  Are the strategies and tactics employed by law enforcement today appropriate in a free society?

Recent events in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY, followed by the “revenge” killing of two New York City police officers, have resulted in a long overdue discussion of the proper role of police in a free society.  Is Protect more important than Serve?  Should law enforcement be reactionary or pre-emptive?  From whom is society to be protected - those with clear, violent natures, or those simply suspected of such?  Is it appropriate for police to stop and question someone based on a suspicion of what they "might" do?  How do police tell them apart?  Should they even try, or is society prepared to simply give total license to whatever law enforcement decides is appropriate?  Does the strategy of “stop and frisk” result in a lowering of crime, or does it ultimately lead to unchecked and unsupervised abuse by individual officers?  Has that strategy led to the targeting of one segment of the population, leading to mistrust of the police?  Can these questions be legitimately asked without the questioner being vilified as “anti-police”?

This paper will argue that the time has come for a serious questioning of current police strategies and tactics in America.  With the “militarization” of police in America, not only have many police agencies acquired surplus military equipment from the Federal government, they have also begun “combat training” with military forces.  Since this phenomenon has become an accepted practice, this discussion will also argue that lessons learned from the Vietnam War should be studied and applied.  While law enforcement is necessary in a civil society, it must be governed by that society.  Like any bureaucracy, if left unchecked law enforcement will come to view its role, not as a means to an end, but as the end itself - not only as the agency to define the problem, but as the sole arbiter of solutions to that problem.

In his book “The Rise of the Warrior Cop”, author Radley Balko traces the evolution of modern policing in America, going all the way back to the Colonial period.   Throughout our history, the pendulum has swung from police as part of the community, to the police being seen as a separate entity from the community they serve.  The entire history of policing in America has been that of “community policing”, a term of derision in many minds today.  Prior to the Industrial Revolution and the concentration of more of the populace in cities, policing was done principally by applying local “standards of behavior”, as judged by the residents themselves.  Citizens, if witnessing a crime, were expected to “raise the hue and cry” and all able bodied men were expected to turn out to apprehend the culprit.

By the early 1800s, the situation had changed.  The overall boom in industrial growth and overcrowding brought more crime, riots, public health issues, race and socio-economic divisions, and general disorder.   In 1833, Philadelphia organized an independent, 24-hour police force.  In 1838, the Boston Police force was established, with a day police and night watch working independently.  New York City followed suit in 1844, becoming the New York City Police Department in 1845. Police departments were now headed by police chiefs who were appointed by political leaders.  While it still had its flaws, this “new” method of policing more closely resembles a modern day police force.

But, even in the early days of “professional police”, the individual officer was a member of the community he served, either being recruited to patrol his old neighborhood, or “walking a beat” to become a recognized fixture.  In those days, the “enemies” were the criminals.  The citizens didn't want them in the neighborhood, any more than the police did.  Today, patrol officers are insulated from the community in their squad cars.  And, with the ever strident “get tough on crime” rhetoric of politicians, an “us versus them” attitude has led the police to view everyone not wearing the blue uniform as at least a “suspect”, if not an outright enemy to be fought with whatever tools are available.

This was the exact strategy employed in Vietnam by Army General William Westmoreland.  A veteran of World War II and Korea, Westmoreland saw combat in terms of the conventional, linear battlefield of those wars.  Consequently, his only strategy was a war of attrition, with the prevailing tactic that of “search and destroy”.  In the midst of this, the U.S. Marines sought to employ their own strategy of “community policing”.  This was known as the Combined Action Platoon (CAP) Program, which was employed in limited, but successful, fashion from 1965 to 1971.  Employing counter-insurgency strategies learned while fighting “small wars” earlier in the 20^th century, the Marines sought to separate the innocent from the guilty, protecting the former through a complete and pervasive presence among the law abiding citizens.

In 1965, Vietnamese living south of the 17^th parallel were primarily coastal agrarians, with 80% of the entire population living within 10 miles of the coast, and 70% growing rice for subsistence.  Taking their lessons from Mao Tse-tung’s insurgent rise to power in an agrarian setting in China, Ho Chi Minh implemented a guerilla-based strategy, placing heavy reliance on the populace of South Vietnam to provide both men and food for the Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces.  The village represented the center of gravity for the Communist movement.

The Marines, in the persons of Generals Lew Walt and Victor Krulak, recognized that by protecting the villagers from the hostile incursions of the Communists, there was no need for U.S. forces to venture miles from the coast to seize territory, as on a conventional battlefield.  The people didn’t LIVE there.  If the people could be protected in their liberty to carry on their daily lives without fear, what real attraction was there in Communist ideology?  And, once those people came to believe they were secure in those liberties, they would trust their protectors and willingly inform on the “bad guys” in their midst.

Marines selected for the CAP were screened and recommended by their respective battalion commander.  Prerequisites for the CAP included two to four months time-in-country with at least six months remaining on a man’s tour, no disciplinary action, and the absence of any xenophobic or racist attitudes toward the Vietnamese people.  The program was decentralized, relying on the trustworthiness of the squad leader and the volunteer make-up of the squad.

The growth in the CAP program encouraged development of the program’s objectives and resulted in a formalized mission with 6 cardinal rules:

1)      Destroy the Vietcong infrastructure within the village or hamlet area of responsibility

2)      Protect public security and help maintain law and order

3)      Protect friendly infrastructure

4)      Protect the bases and lines of communication within the villages and hamlets

5)      Organize the people’s intelligence nets

6)      Participate in civic action and conduct propaganda against the Viet Cong.

The essence of the objective was to separate the people from the Viet Cong.  Beginning at the lowest level, that of the peasant, CAP achieved noteworthy success for three reasons:

1)      Small numbers of Marines do not agitate hamlet life or create xenophobic reactions to military forces

2)      The Marine squad had adequate tactical firepower to convince peasants of their military competence.

3)      The rank, age, and attitudes of the Marines chosen for the CAP made it easy for peasants to identify with the Marines as individuals.

Sounds surprisingly like what police should be doing in their communities.

But, there were almost as many battles fought between the Marine generals and Westmoreland as were fought between U.S. and North Vietnamese forces.  By the close of 1965, the Marines concluded that Combined Action showed promise and resolved to expand the program beyond the initial 6 platoons.  By 1969, there were 114 Combined Action Platoons deployed.  However, implementation of CAP remained a “balancing act” of sorts between the Marines and Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” strategy.  In order to be allowed to continue with CAP, the Marines were also forced to participate in "search and destroy".  CAP strength never surpassed 2,500, or the equivalent of a single, slightly undermanned regiment.  Although CAP squads were often isolated in "Indian Country", Marine deaths in search and destroy far exceeded those in CAP.

We now know that Westmoreland's war of attrition was a failure.  The U.S. lost the war.  Search and Destroy led to the destruction of the village of Bien Tre in February 1968 and the famous statement attributed to the S-3 of the 3/39th Infantry, "We had to destroy Bien Tre in order to save it".  In a similar way, the American people are losing the "war on crime" because they have surrendered many of their liberties in exchange for a perception of security.  It's difficult to judge that we're winning that war by p--sing off the very people the police are supposed to be protecting.

Although violent crime in America has steadily decreased since its peak in 1993, the perception of the American people is just the opposite.  In 2013, more police officers died as a result of automobile/motorcycle accidents and heart attacks than were killed in shootouts with the bad guys.  One problem with the statistics on officer deaths, reported on the Officer Down Memorial Page, is that even officers who die from illness are listed as having died "in the line of duty".  Accurate statistics are not kept, however, on the number of citizens killed each year by police and under what circumstances.  Were the police actually pursuing a criminal, or did they kill an unarmed American in their home in a botched drug raid on the wrong house?  Perhaps so long as the person killed is a member of someone else's family, it can be tolerated by the majority.  But, in a free society, even one such death should be considered too many.

The perception of Americans about crime can be attributed directly to the drum beat of conservative politicians campaigning on a “get tough on crime” platform.   Their focus is not on truth.  Like all politicians, they are concerned only with getting elected.  The public has been frightened to the point that they have turned a blind eye to the excesses of the police.  So long as they themselves have not had a violent encounter with a police officer, they are perfectly willing to let the police make their own rules.

But, the proliferation of SWAT-type units in local police forces, and the increasing use of “no-knock” raids, often based on unreliable or downright false information, has led to a situation in which police now enter a situation with guns drawn and maximum force, rather than attempting to diffuse the situation before deadly force is needed.  The number of innocent Americans killed in their own homes by police raiding the wrong address should be a warning signal that the pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction.  Those who have not had that bad encounter with the police may be next.

Add to this the power of police unions willing to defend even the most egregious behavior on the part of officers, and even those officers who “slip through the cracks” during screening and training, and who misuse their authority, cannot be removed from the force.  Good officers who see what’s happening and can readily identify the bad cops are pressured to maintain their silence.  Moral courage seems to be missing entirely.

As previously stated, in the minds of many Community Policing carries a negative stigma.  It is somehow believed that having police actually know and interact with the very people they are protecting is somehow being “soft on crime”.  But, the positive lessons from the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam should be revisited.  When police know the community, they have better intelligence.  There is much less chance of mistakenly attacking the wrong people.  Police must once again place their greatest emphasis on Service to the public.  Everyone should not be viewed as the enemy.  However, this cannot be left to the police.  It is up to local elected officials to rein in their police, structuring their force and its tactics to reflect the nature of their community.

If CAP could work in a war zone, something similar can surely work in America.