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Officers Donate Equipment to Help Iraqi Police

Dec- 6-2004 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT , Homefront , Iraq News

Registration required to view full article. Fricke has a son with the 1/25 SBCT as well.

Link to Full Article
By Amanda Covarrubias, Times Staff Writer

When U.S. Army Maj. Daniel E. Fricke visited police stations in Iraq this year, he was surprised by what he didn't see — flak jackets, gun belts, flashlights and batons.

As a sergeant with the Los Angeles School Police Department, which serves the Los Angeles Unified School District's 1,042 campuses, he knows how difficult it is to conduct police work even under the best circumstances.

But the police departments in northern Iraq that he helped train were severely under-equipped, Fricke said.

So he called his boss in Los Angeles, Deputy Chief Lawrence Manion, who asked the school district's 270 police officers to donate their used-but-still-serviceable equipment to the fledgling Iraqi police forces.

Many officers chipped in, donating not only gear, but $1,800 in cash to cover shipping expenses.

A month later, thousands of dollars in spare bulletproof vests, helmets, batons and print kits to dust crime scenes were on their way to the Irbil Police Department in northern Iraq, where Fricke trained newly sworn officers. [...]

Fricke, 49, of Palmdale went to Iraq in June as an Army reservist and was scheduled to return to Los Angeles this month after a brief stop at Central Command headquarters in Florida.

A specialist in civil affairs, Fricke was assigned to the Multinational Security Transition Center in Iraq, which is preparing Iraqis to assume more control of their country's security. He oversaw the construction of a police training academy in Iraq, capable of handling up to 1,000 cadets at a time.

The experience was nothing new to Fricke. As a reservist, he performed similar duties in Bosnia when that country was making its transition to democracy a decade ago.

The demands of military life are also familiar to his family. Fricke is the divorced father of four. His eldest son, Jeremy, 25, is serving in Mosul, Iraq, with the Army's Stryker Brigade and another son, Josh, 19, is in basic training to become a military police officer.


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