Challenge

We are doing some intensive training with one of the districts, providing both soldier training and "systems training" to the leadership. When we first arrived at the district, being new to the area, we met the CoP (Chief of Police,) who seemed to be a pretty stand-up guy. We told him about our intentions, and he was all "on board" with it.

A week later, when we came to the district to do some final coordination, that CoP was gone… no trace. In his place was another Lieutenant Colonel who was the new CoP. He seemed like a decent guy, talking about community policing and getting out to meet the village elders in the area. This all sounded good to us.

When we arrived to do the training, he was like a changed man. Not to myself and the Captain, of course… at first. He first showed his colors to SSG Prince, squad leader of the MP's who work to train the ANP in this area (which is a very different arrangement from the other province, where we rarely saw and never worked with any MP's.) He made it obvious to SSG Prince that he was not going to be cooperative. SSG Prince voiced this, but the Captain and I took a wait-and-see position.

Over the course of the past couple of weeks, he has shown his colors to all of us, and has demonstrated some behaviors that we all feel are pretty strange. We have major concerns about this guy. The general impression is that he's "dirty," but we don't know how; we don't know what he's doing that he's trying to conceal from us… but it sure does feel like he is trying to conceal something.

He told us that he came from a province where I know the Police Mentors, so I called and found that they had never heard of him. Hmmmm. He wouldn't cooperate to do his background interview; a biographical sketch of his professional history that would help us to understand his training and experience. Hmmmm. He became very agitated when we wanted to inventory his weapons. Hmmmm. When we did inventory his weapons, the numbers didn't match up. Hmmmm. He won't let his supply officer sign for equipment or order all of what the district needs. Hmmmm.

Things are not looking good. We aren't worried that he will try to kill us at this point, because we are convinced that he feels that he is handling us and that we aren't suspicious.

We are.