From blog of bile comes news of an exercise that Comrade Bosco calls a “Police State LARP.”

According to The Carroll Daily Times-Herald:

The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company.

Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate.

Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer.

The primary phase will be done Saturday, April 4, when convoys will be deployed from Carroll to Arcadia. Pictures of the arms dealer will be shown in Arcadia, and soldiers will go door to door asking if residents have seen the suspect.

Soldiers will knock only at households that have agreed to participate in the drill, Kots noted.

“Once credible intelligence has been gathered,” said Kots, “portions of the town will be road-blocked and more in-depth searches of homes and vehicles will be conducted in accordance with the residents’ wishes.

“One of the techniques we use in today’s political environment is cordon and knock,” Kots explained. “We ask for the head of the household, get permission to search, then have them open doors and cupboards. The homeowner maintains control. We peer over their shoulder, and the soldier uses the homeowner’s body language and position to protect him.”

During this phase of the operation, troops will interact with residents and media while implementing crowd-control measures and possibly treating and evacuating injured persons…

Kots said the exercise will replace Alpha Company’s weekend drill for April.

“We have a lot of extended drills this coming year,” he added.

In addition to surveillance, searching and apprehension, the exercise will also give the troops valuable experience in stability, support, patrol, traffic control, vehicle searches and other skills needed for deployment in an urban environment…

Some may think of this as a simple PR and recruitment stunt. But as I have said before, the experience that the military gains in subduing foreign populations is applicable to subduing any population. Have you noticed that new armored vehicles like the MRAP and Stryker are primarily designed to protect troops deploying against insurgents? Who exactly is the government protecting us from?

ADDENDUM: The military has done training exercises involving civilians for a while. It would be interesting to study whether the frequency and focus of such exercises has changed. It should also be noted that an Army brigade has recently been deployed for domestic roles including crowd control and dealing with civil unrest.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under current event, info share. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.