Iraqi Police 1st Lt. Loay Hassan asks a liquor store owner to keep his customers from drinking in a park across the street Saturday in Baghdad’s Abu Nuwas neighborhood. Liquor is sold legally in many parts of Baghdad, but it is not allowed in the park. (Photo by James Warden/Stars and Stripes)
BAGHDAD — Saturday night marked yet another joint patrol for American soldiers and Iraqi Police. But the bad guys they were looking for this time were hardly blood-thirsty insurgents.
They were drunks and pimps.
Soldiers with Troop B, 3rd Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment hit the streets of Baghdad’s Abu Nuwas neighborhood to enforce the area’s alcohol and prostitution rules.
Abu Nuwas, in the Rusafa district, is one of the Iraqi capital’s centerpiece attractions. It has acres of green grass, ample sidewalks and renowned fish restaurants. Most importantly, it has dozens of private security guards who make it among the safest places in Baghdad, if not the safest.
"This is one of the few places in Baghdad where a family can come out with their kids without being harassed and have a day playing in the park," said 1st Sgt. Wesley Rehm.
Yet park goers had recently begun to complain that drunks were making the park an unsavory place for families. There were even rumors that some of the restaurants were acting as brothels.
"These people you’re serving alcohol to, they’re going across the street and groping little girls and pissing on little kids. That’s wrong," Rehm admonished the owner of the restaurant whose customer had, in fact, urinated on a child Friday.
Alcohol is sold legally across Baghdad. Liquor stores sell their wares just across the street from the Abu Nuwas park. Yet Baghdad’s Amanat — or city hall — has forbidden drinking in the park itself and in restaurants on that side of the street.
The Iraqi Police also don’t have any problem closing down restaurants across the street from the park, even though alcohol sales are legal there. They found one smoke-filled restaurant that didn’t meet their standards. It had standing water, beer cans strewn across the floor and dozens of inebriated customers. Like cops breaking up a house party, they just ordered the customers out and closed the restaurant.
The business with the urinating customers suffered a similar fate.
The police have gained a reputation over the years, starting in the Saddam Hussein era, of taking such actions just because they can, Rehm said. The Americans went along on what would normally be a simple police mission in order to add their authority to combating the problem. Rehm told his soldiers before the patrol that the decision to arrest someone was up to the Iraqis since they were enforcing Iraqi law.
"When we show up with the Iraqi security forces, it gives credibility to the Iraqi security forces — that we’re supporting what they’re doing," he said.
The group — led by two Iraqi police officers — shuttered two restaurants and chased several drinkers out of the park. No arrests were made, but drinkers were warned they would be arrested in the future, if caught again. No one found any evidence of prostitution.
The soldiers had mixed feelings about the patrol.
"It’s one of the first things they tell you when you come in country: They aren’t supposed to have [that type of patrol]," said Sgt. Kevin Maddox.
Maddox, though, thought the biggest gain from the mission was that the community saw the coalition supporting the Iraqi Police.
"They see us working with the ISF [Iraqi security forces], and it generally gives a lot of legitimacy to what they’re doing," he said.
Yet some complained to one another privately at the end of the mission. One soldier compared it to being a rent-a-cop on prom night. Another asked a fellow soldier whether it was necessary to use the might of the American military to police such crimes.
