Misconduct, corruption by U.S. police mar Bosnia mission

UNITED NATIONS -- In the five years since international police officers were sent to Bosnia to help restore law and order, the U.N. police mission there has faced numerous charges of misconduct, corruption and sexual impropriety. But in virtually every case, the allegations have been hushed up by sending officers home, often without a full investigation, according to internal U.N. reports and interviews with U.S. and European officials.

The troubles of the U.N. police mission in Bosnia have important consequences for the Bush administration. Eager to scale back military commitments, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing to reduce the 3,350 American soldiers on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia and replace them with civilian police.

But some U.N. and European officials question the wisdom of shifting responsibility onto the international police force without first addressing its flaws, including low recruitment standards, a hazy command structure and the ability of individual officers to act with near impunity.

"Here we are, international police officers hoping to demonstrate and impress the locals with democratic policing and high moral values, and we're actually presenting them with one or two people who ought to be investigated and locked up," said Richard Monk, a top British policeman who served as the U.N. police commissioner in 1997.

Among the 1,832 U.N. police in Bosnia are 161 officers from the United States. While the record of the U.S. contingent is no worse than others, senior American officials acknowledge serious problems in selecting and training U.S. police officers to serve in Bosnia. That job has been given to a private, Texas-based corporation, DynCorp Technical Services, under an exclusive, $15 million annual contract with the State Department.

In the past year alone, at least three American policemen were removed from the Bosnian mission for sexual misconduct and exceeding their authority, according to U.N. officials.

In prior cases, several other U.S. officers had been forced to resign under suspicion of committing statutory rape, abetting prostitution and accepting valuable gifts from Bosnian officials. Yet none was prosecuted. The most serious punishment imposed on an American officer was dismissal and the loss of a $4,600 bonus.

Asked about the allegations, DynCorp issued a statement voicing disappointment that the misconduct of a few individuals has cast a shadow on the more than 2,000 police monitors who have helped to achieve the U.N. mission to rebuild these nations.''

"Upon learning of the allegations from U.N. officials, we acted swiftly and responsibly, terminating and repatriating the individuals involved," the company said.

International police have diplomatic immunity from prosecution in Bosnia, and unless their governments waive that immunity, the most severe punishment the United Nations can impose on renegade cops is to send them home.

DynCorp refuses to disclose how many U.S. officers have been sent home and says privacy laws effectively prevent it from telling prospective employers about misconduct allegations.

Thomas Miller, the U.S. ambassador in Bosnia, conceded that in a race to find American police willing to serve abroad, the U.S. contingent accepted some officers who were unfit to serve on the International Police Task Force, or IPTF.

"In terms of the quality of U.S. IPTF folks, I have seen some really good ones," Miller said. "And I've heard about some not so good ones. No, let's be honest, bad ones."

American officials say the failings are due to inexperience in international policing and the absence of a national police force like France's Gendarmerie or Italy's Carabinieri. American participation in U.N. civilian police, or CivPol, missions has increased from about 50 American cops in Haiti in 1993 to about 880 serving today in U.N. missions in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor.

President Bill Clinton issued a presidential decision directive, known as PDD 71, in February 2000 acknowledging that "the current process used by our government to recruit, prepare, train and deploy civilian police officers to CivPol operations is not adequate."

Last summer, the White House asked the FBI and police commissioners from major U.S. cities to provide a reserve of police officers who could be sent abroad to serve in U.N. missions. But the FBI and big city police departments demurred. "They slammed the door on us," said one former Clinton administration official.

When the U.N. mission in Bosnia began in 1996, DynCorp scoured U.S. police departments in search of bored or underpaid officers looking for a change of pace. Advertisements in police publications promised adventure in a distant land for as much as $100,000 a year. To meet the State Department's demand for police, the company hired many retired officers, including some over age 65.

According to U.N. and DynCorp officials, many of the U.S. officers have performed nobly, even donating money and labor to local charities. In the town of Gorazde, for instance, U.S. officers established a shelter for battered women. An American officer from Golden, Colo., and his wife organized a shipment of 800,000 pounds of school supplies for the Bosnian school system.

"The top 10 percent (of the American contingent) were fantastic: they are what made the mission," said a former U.N. police officer who requested anonymity. "But the bottom 10 percent made your eyes water."

One former Illinois state trooper was wearing a pacemaker when he arrived in the town of Stolac to set up the U.N. police headquarters, according to Steve Smith, a former officer from Santa Cruz, Calif., who served as the U.N.'s regional commander in Stolac.

"There was (another) guy, he was very elderly, in his sixties, that couldn't stay awake," said Smith. "He was very overweight, he waddled rather than walked. Neither one of them could have passed a physical."

But the main trouble with American officers, in Smith's view, was that they were difficult to command.

"It's easy to keep the French guys in line because they come from the Gendarmerie Nationale and they get an evaluation at the end of their stay," he said. "For the Americans, on the other hand, there are no professional consequences unless they want to keep working for DynCorp. The problem is that you have no hammer. . . "They're making $85,000 in a place where everyone else is making $5,000 and they're chasing whores, they're shacking up with young women, and they're basically just having a good time," Smith said.

While U.N. officials said they were disappointed in the Americans, they conceded that the U.S. contingent was far from the weakest in the mission. Indonesia, Pakistan and Nepal sent police officers who could not speak English -- the working language of the IPTF -- or drive a vehicle, officials said. Jordanians, Pakistanis and Germans have also been sent home for sexual misconduct.