Perhaps the most successful of the marines' tactics have been the nighttime raids. With more than 70 police officers in the battalion, the work-up for the raids at the Mahmudiya base has been strongly influenced by American police tactics. Colonel Smith said he attributed much of the unit's success in tracking down wanted insurgents to Warrant Officer Jim Roussell, a 53-year-old Chicago police sergeant who spent years working with the city's gang unit.
Mr. Roussell, a tall, spare man with a graying crew cut, agreed that tracking down insurgents in Iraq was not so different from hunting down street gang members. "In both cases, you're dealing with young people who are disenfranchised and angry and pick up weapons," he said.
To identify them, he said, the marines' intelligence unit follows family ties, picks up tips from street patrols and develops "snitches," many of them captured insurgents.
"It's ground-level intelligence, it's patrolling, it's interacting with people," he said. "At base, it's straightforward police work."
The New York Times > International > Middle East > Marines' Raids Underline Push in Crucial Area
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