Newshoggers Archive: Catch and release or the problems of local intel

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Catch and release or the problems of local intel

By Dave Anderson:

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Mexican justice system is basically a stocked trout stream; lots of fish are caught, photographed and bragged about, but are just as quickly released back into the general population:

cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make
swift captures unravel from lack of evidence. Innocent people are
tortured into confessing. The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in
again for other crimes. Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets
arrested.

Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government
arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and September 2009,
the most recent numbers available. Less than a quarter of that number
were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney
general's office won't say how many of those were guilty.

In Iraq, the US Army and Marines took a massive number of suspected insurgents prisoners. Most of those prisoners were quickly released either because they were actually innocents who just looked suspicious (i.e. Iraqi) or there was a dysfunctional justice and prisoner system with mass corruption.

In both cases, the headline numbers looked good as the forces that were trying to impose centralized control and order were scooping up large numbers of either nacro-traffickers, sicarros or insurgents, while the underlying data was horrendous once it is examined.

A 75% release rate before charges are brought is horrendous. It indicates a police system that rewards quantity of work instead of quality of work. Intelligence is sparse as informants or potential informants don't trust the police or at least do not trust the federal police and army to protect them and their families from highly probable retribution. Poor intelligence means most missions and patrols are effectively pointless as any valuable target knows that they can either evade, or bullshit their way out of a charge or two. Poor intelligence means the cartels are highly likely inside the police information loop and can initiate contact when and where they want. If Mexican cartels embrace IED warfare, poor intelligence means they can create effective autonomous zones.

Catch and release is a fine fish management plan. It is horrendous as a law enforcement and counter-cartel strategy.

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Catch and release or the problems of local intel

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