Enid man trains Afghan police

November 11, 2008 12:17 am

— By Capt. J. Elaine Hunnicutt
Special to the News & Eagle

NANGARHAR, Afghanistan — Three airmen, including Enid native Staff Sgt. Curtis Hames, trained and graduated 900 Afghan national police members in Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Lagman (N2KL) provinces during a nine-month deployment.
They were part of a Department-of-State-owned program providing a secondary-level of professional police officer education at the Jalalabad Regional Training Center.
“I have three of the finest airmen working at the RTC training the backbone of the communities in N2KL,” said Lt. Col. Paul Donovan, their Air Force commanding officer. “These individuals are the top of their career field and have been on autopilot since we arrived. I rarely see them because they are located on a separate compound, but they are never forgotten, and we do our best to include them.
“They have always maintained great attitudes throughout the two months of training and now during the mission — I couldn’t have asked for a finer group of airmen — I only get rave reviews about their performance and professionalism.”
Hames has served for 14 years in the Marines and now the Air Force. Tech. Sgt. Brady Holcolmb, deployed from Langley Air Force Base, Va., has served for 12 years and is from Mountain Home, Idaho. Staff Sgt. Kevin Krouse, deployed from Bolling Air Force Base, DC, has served for nine years and is from Mount Wilson, Penn.
There are seven regional training centers total located in Afghanistan: Kandahar, Herat, Gardez, Mazar-e-Sharif, Konduz, Bamyan and Jalalabad.
The trainees attend an eight-week course that provides instruction in the following areas: general police duties, weapons proficiency, first aid, human rights, community policing, basic border police training and Afghan law and constitution.
Most of the students are illiterate and have a second job in addition to being a police officer to offset their low wages. Since their options are limited and their ability to feed their families comes into play when making decisions, ethics training is vital for the success of the police department.
Hames focuses on ethics training.
“I feel like I am steering a battleship towards the right direction,” he said. “I have them all day, for eight weeks, and I tend to change their way of thinking. I am teaching them that the village elder does not trump the law. I feel I have made a difference. When I go outside the wire, I know how they operate.”
An entire police department comes to train, while they are backfilled by a traveling police department out of Kabul. Team building is what Holcolmb focuses on the most with his training sessions.
“I get in a group of cops that have minimal training, and when they leave they can field a decent police department,” Holcolmb said.
“It is better that they come as a group because one problem that we face is that the village elder runs the city not the police chief — together they learn how to change this mindset among themselves and are better able to enforce the law,” Holcolmb said.
“We administer firearms training on a live range and apply squad movement techniques. In addition, they receive training on vehicle searches and police checkpoints,” Krouse said.
“If they find a terrorist with a suicide vest using these search techniques before they are able to detonate themselves, then they will save lives,” he said.

Hunnicutt is part of the Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team.