Blackwater wants to train Idaho cops

Guess what, Idaho? Blackwater wants to train our cops. Yes, that Blackwater. Marc Stewart of the Coeur d'Alene Press wrote this week:

The North Carolina-based company is negotiating a contract with the Idaho Peace Officer Standards & Training Academy to provide space and instruction to law enforcement personnel. ... Sheriff Rocky Watson expressed concern that Blackwater, which has big military contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, partnering with Idaho POST will create the wrong impression with the public.

"The perception that our law enforcement officers will be trained by mercenaries is a problem," Watson said. "Our jobs are totally different. We're not paramilitary. The perception is important to our customers."

Blackwater officials strongly maintain that no military training will take place at the facility here. ... The company has faced media scrutiny about its role in Iraq. Blackwater is one of three big contractors providing security services to key U.S. personnel. DynCorp., and Triple Canopy also have employees deployed there.

Blackwater personnel are accused of gunning down 17 people, including women and children last September in Iraq. The FBI is investigating claims made by witnesses that Blackwater guards shot and killed without provocation.

Blackwater isn't winning any popularity contests in other locations where it has sought to open up shop. Calitics, a California blog, is packed with posts on how a Blackwater plan to do terrorism response training for the U.S. Navy just three blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border is meeting with strong resistance from local residents ... this just months after voters in nearby Potrero, CA, recalled all the pro-Blackwater planning board members in their small town when the contractor tried to establish a base there.

From the news account above, it appears that Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson is appropriately concerned about Blackwater's image and the damage its presence could do to Idaho's reputation and that of our law enforcement officers. Don't back down, Sheriff Watson. The more people know about Blackwater, the blood on its hands, its ties to religious zealots, and its shaky finances, the more they will come to see that it has no business meddling in government affairs - on any level. Contact POST executive director Jeff Black and Gary Tolleson of Idaho POST's North Idaho office and tell them that you think outsourcing Idaho's police training to Blackwater is a bad idea.

Comments

[Robert Cruickshank]

Excellent post on the issue, and thanks for the links to our Block Blackwater site (I work for the Courage Campaign) and to the most recent action, trying to get San Diego's mayor to stop a new Blackwater facility. Get this - they want to take a site permitted for a dental school and start training them there, just blocks from the Mexican border.

It sounds like what's being proposed in the panhandle is quite similar - use an existing program and/or facility and sneak in under that cover, instead of trying to go it alone and open their own facility.

Do you have any sense of how folks in Idaho will react to this news?

[IdahoRocks]

Great post and job well done, RSR! I've spread the word to my CdA friends and they seem to take it to heart. Nobody I know in north Idaho wants Blackwater anywhere in the area and I'll spread the word about. We're rather isolationist up here and don't take well to the interference of outsiders, no matter what our party affiliation....

[christian stalberg]

I you want to keep these fast and loose deadly force wielding mercenaries out of your communities and from training your law enforcement to 'shoot first, ask questions later', then I suggest you network with the folks in North Carolina, San Diego and Illinois. Blackwater is staging there just as they are in San Diego in hopes of getting a likely no-bid mega-contract to protect (sic) the border of the Fatherland - sieg heil!

This from the Courage Campaign:

Hi,

I thought you might be interested in this Courage Campaign petition I just signed, asking Speaker Pelosi to support legislation effectively banning Blackwater from Iraq. We need to stop Blackwater before they use their mercenary profits from Iraq to set up a base of operations in San Diego just three blocks from the Mexican border.

If we can convince Speaker Pelosi to stop Blackwater from privatizing national security with our tax dollars, it could be the beginning of the end for Blackwater in Iraq. And California.

Please join me in asking Speaker Pelosi -- California's most powerful member of Congress -- to take leadership by supporting the "Stop Outsourcing Security Act" as soon as possible.

Will you join me?

http://www.couragecampaign.org/BanBlackwater

Thanks!

[Julie in Boise]

IdahoRocks, thanks for spreading the word in North Idaho. We definitely need to keep an eye on this.

Robert and Christian, thanks for the added info. The Courage Campaign and Calitics have done fine work in alerting people to Blackwater plans and helping scuttle those plans, and we'll try our best to do the same here in Idaho.

[Law Abiding citizen]

Once again, the liberal left speaking on things they have no idea. Any of you been in the military or are law enforcement. (Let alone done ANY real research on BW, and the thousands of law enforcement and military personnel - WHO KEEP YOU SAFE?) You bitch and complain about the police, until you need us. You complain about the military, but you don't have the integrity to have ever joined. Let me guess, you're democrats, and white collar. Imagine that.....living under the freedoms we provide, not contributing to anything but yourselves, yet you critisize and complain about issues you have no real knowledge or understanding of. You second guess the young men and women who allow you the freedoms and American given right to complain, yet you go to those brave patriots funeral and taunt their grieving relatives. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. You talk about banding together and trying to keep them out of other states, get a clue, quick believing EVERYTHING the liberal press brainwashes you with. Get down from your tree, and quit complaining about war for oil, how do you think you and your liberal friends drugs are deliverd? By car and plane you sad little people.