The book Black Hearts begins by painting an awful picture of a crime scene that was reported to 1st platoon Bravo Company of the 1-502nd 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers that are sent to investigate find that an entire family has been murdered, the daughter had been raped, and someone attempted to set the house ablaze, the family had all been killed in a seemingly brutal execution, while investigating one of the NCOs found a shotgun shell which he thought was strange because most Iraqis do not use shotguns. He compiled the evidence to be sent up to higher and they chalked it up as another Iraqi on Iraqi sectarian execution. Then the book takes us to before any of that happened, the book focuses on a battalion in the 101st Airborne …show more content…
The conditions they took over from where atrocious, the unit closed many of the roads to military units because they had taken to many IEDs on them, they had rats in their living quarters, garbage all over the place, and they couldn’t wait to get out, they had a rough time in the triangle and it left a bad first impression on the men of the 1-502nd that they were in for a rough deployment. Going into the deployment Goodwin was still one of Kunk’s favored commanders and was assigned to one of the tougher sectors. Kunk thought that Goodwin would be able to wrest control of the “wild west”. The Bravo Company AO had three main tasks, to secure the Jurf Al-sukr Bridge, man 6 traffic control points, and patrol and maintain quick reaction force should anything go wrong at any of those points. Bravo Company had 3 rifle platoons to get all of these tasks done, each platoon would take control of one of these tasks and rotate between them. First platoon was led by Lt. Britt who was liked by his men and had good control over them. He had strong squad leaders that ran their squads well. 1st squad would be the most trouble, it was led by Staff Sergeant Nelson. 1st platoon was tasked with manning the traffic control points when the first blow to their leadership would happen. There was one soldier who had to accidental shootings within a week of each other but both where cleared as
Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time
As they began to clear the routes in the AO the casualties starting occurring. After some time had passed all the platoons had experienced many deaths and were starting to lose a lot of their platoon leadership. The mounting pressure of combat combined with the pressure coming down from LTC Kunk communication between the company and battalion level leadership began to digress. With morale lowering with every day and casualty that went by the men began to run the tactical checkpoints that they had set up ruthlessly. They weren’t treating civilian harshly and would even harass them physically. This gave them a notorious record among the Iraqi civilians. Going into December 2005 the men had begun to relax on their own standard operating procedures along the
Bravo Company Commander Captain John Goodwin is the next highest ranking officer after LTC Kunk. Captain Goodwin was in charge of Bravo Company, nicknamed “Bulldogs” throughout their deployment. He is described as being a dedicated, though manic, leader who while in theater regularly slept in the communications room next to the radio so he could monitor all incoming and outgoing radio traffic. His methods, while proving ultimately to be poorly conceived, were acted out of duty and the fear during an unrelenting occurrence of attacks in the form of roadside bombs. Not long into the deployment the stress of his company’s constant encounters wore down his physical and mental state thus further impeding his decisions and clouding his judgment.
They found out they were going to one of the most if not the most dangerous place in Iraq South Baghdad also known as the Triangle of Death. October 2005 2nd Brigade started to arrive Kunk dispersed the Companies: Bravo-West, Charlie-South, Alpha-central, and Delta-North. Kunk assigned Bravo and Charlie who he believed to be his best companies the mission he judged to be the toughest. The relief in place and transfer of authority was quite displeasing many men said that the National Guard unit 48th were quite beaten up and done for. They claimed the men looked beat and scared letting the enemy dictate where they could and could not go and had very little intel on the AO and surrounding areas to pass along to them. As everyone started to settle in to their AO Kunk started focusing on the overall mission to fight the insurgency and support the people and train the IA. Now focusing in more on Bravo, Goodwin took over the Yusufiyah area and was very
First Platoon had many leaders brought in to try and fix the platoon. Sergeant First Class Fenlason was brought into the platoon as the new platoon sergeant on February 4th, 2006. He was not respected right away because he was one who did not have any combat experience. He was just a desk worker who got brought in to fix the platoon with a cocky attitude. From the Joes perspective he did nothing but “{sit} around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and that’s it. He would do patrols once a month to go and talk to some leaders.” They hated
The following piece of work will discuss racism within the criminal justice system by viewing the Black Lives Matter movement, the roles of law enforcement and how that effects citizens, and potential solutions to the problems in the system. Within our criminal justice system, it is evident that there is a problem by the ratio of blacks in prison, and the number of police brutality cases in the country.
The trend of African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 has seen a dramatic increase of incarceration. Attention has been focusing on areas of housing, education, and healthcare but the most prominent problem for African American males is the increase in the incarceration rate. African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 incarceration rate has been thought, by many, to be caused by economic factors such as under employment or unemployment, poor housing, lack of education, and lack of healthcare. Yet, others believe it is due to the imbalance of minorities within the criminal justice system, such as judges, lawyers, and lawmakers.
The disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the prison system is a very serious issue, which is not usually discussed in its totality. However, it is quite important to address the matter because it ultimately will have an effect on African Americans as a whole.
Black on black violence is an enormous problem in the African-American community. Living in a neighborhood that is mostly minority, many may have witnessed a lot of black on black violence. The black on black violence has continued to arise in many communities and continues to be a problem around the world. Black on black violence is ignorant, and many black Americans should be coming together instead of killing one another. African-Americans people should be helping each other achieve in the world, instead of putting one another.
Over the last two years in the United States the African-American people have been fighting a war within our own backyards. The Washington Post reports that since January 2015, the police have shot and killed over 175 young black men ranging from ages 18-29; 24 of them were unarmed. On the flip side 172 young white men were killed, only 18 being unarmed. With these statistics there are similarities in the numbers but, blacks were killed at rates disproportional to their percentage of U.S population (1.Washington Post). Of all unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015. With 40% being black men make up just 6% of the nation’s populations. In the wake of the killings of Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and many more the world has been made more publicly aware of injustices black people have to handle when dealing with law enforcement. Crime in the black community is nothing new in the black community or should I say black on black crime. There is a bad stereotype that has been put on black people since slavery times that I believe has help fueled the violence between the police and my people.
In the next part of the book Frederick talks about continued strife between all levels of leadership and the establishment of the TCPs. There were 6 TCPs, or tactical control points, in the AO. The TCPs went against mostly everything the army trains for by doctrine. They were sparsely manned, fixed positions that the men felt more vulnerable at than anything. They would continue to be the center of many issues that arise in the future of their deployment. With the TCPs adding more friction in the battalion relationship communication lines got more and more strained. Conflict between the company commanders and the battalion commander during garrison time was ten times as worse during wartime. Kunk and the company commanders continued to create a gap in their relationship that led to very unfavorable operating positions for future operations.
The researchers of this paper analyze data to determine the difference in recidivism rates among different states. From the data gathered, they determine what factors increase and decrease those rates. Some factors included are the type of crime, the difference in incentive structures, the degree of harshness in the prison, the sentence length, and use of work programs and rehab after prison. “This paper fills the gap and examines the relationship between recidivism rates and quality of formal institutions across the states.” (Hall 159). The intended purpose of the research was to show that further studies should be done to help control crime and recidivism. Recidivism rates can be lowered with the right approach.
“Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious,rude,belligerent,and brutal.”-Benjamin Spock
For hundreds of years society has sought a theory of criminality with which to strike back against the dark figure of crime. Theories of crime have always been heavily tinted by the social climate in which they were created. For example, until the 18th century Western European criminological thought was firmly rooted in Christianity, which considered crime the work of the Devil. Punishments were meted out not based on the merit of one 's actions, but to turn away the evil and reinforce order in a community. With the dawn of the Enlightment and the parting of the philosophical clouds a cast of venerable philosophers and scientists arrived to begin imparting their insights to the growing intellectual community. Men like Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham embraced humanist principles that declared all men equal, rational actors with the ability to make logical choices of their own free will. Thus Classical School criminologists advocated punishments that were rational, logical, and proportionate to the crime so as to outweigh its benefits and deter other rational actors from committing the same prohibited act. Early 20th century criminology was heavily influenced by Darwin 's Theory of Evolution and Herbert Spencer 's derivative philosophy of Social Darwinism. Criminologists of the Social Darwinism era were men like Cesare Lombroso, who used the pseudo-scientific principles of Atavism to promote his theory that criminality can be traced to genetic and physiological traits like
In general the definition of a crime is an act punishable by law, usually considered an evil act. Crime refers to many types of misconduct forbidden by law. Crimes include such things as murder, stealing a car, resisting arrest, possession or dealing of illegal drugs, being nude in public , drunk driving, and bank robbery. Crime is an act that has been timeless and has been committed practically since the start of time. For example, ever since Cain killed his brother Abel (B.C.), people being charged with witchcraft in the 1600’s, prostitution, to the current crimes of modern day(A.D.). Even though crime has existed throughout time it has progressed and branched out taking many types forms.