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by Lt. Tom
Woods,
—Denton P.D., TX
As promised last issue, I'd like to share with
you my experiences in Rwanda, Africa this past summer. I was invited by the
University of North Texas to participate in a program which they were involved
in with the US Department of Justice. Many of you may know the program as
"ICITAP" (International Criminal Investigation Training Assistance Program),
which was developed to provide basic police training to budding democracies
around the world. The ICITAP curriculum covers every phase of police work,
from basic crime reporting, to homicide investigation, as well as other topics
related to the particular country's situation.
UNT operates a regional police academy in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and
worked with ICITAP to provide a basic police bike-training course. This bike
school was to be ICITAP's final phase of training for the Communal Police
in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali. And naturally, nothing less than an
IPMBA certified PC Course would meet the challenge. I worked with UNT PD
bike instructor Mark Gohlke, and together we had no idea of what we were
about to tackle in putting one hundred Rwandan students through the four
day course in two weeks.
The setting for this PC Course was like no other we'd ever seen. Rwanda recently
experienced a period of deadly political unrest, pitting tribal factions
against each other (Tutsi vs. Hutu) for control of the government. In 1993
civil war erupted after Rwandan President Habyarimana and the President of
Burundi were killed when their plane was shot down over Kigali. The aftermath
brought the brutal massacre of an estimated 500,000 Rwandans. We learned
that neighbors in Kigali fought each other to the death outside their homes
with machetes, and citizens were rounded up by soldiers and executed en mass
around the city. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu fled the country into The
Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and other neighboring nations. Thousands
of those refugees subsequently died by the bullet. machete, disease and
starvation.
Since the war's end, thousands of refugees have tried to return to Rwanda
and their former homes, only to find that Tutsis have taken over their land
and occupied their houses. (There was still sporadic fighting as close as
seventy miles from where we set up training.) This situation poses a tremendous
problem for the police and the national government, which is where the Communal
Police will come into play. The responsibility for maintaining order will
fall on their shoulders once they're trained and deployed, and many will
be on mountain bikes.
Kigali, less than 200 miles south of the equator, is at an elevation of 6,000
feet, and is topographically very hilly. In fact, the name of our hotel was
the "Mille Collines," the English translation being, "Thousand Hills." The
neighborhood streets and roads are unpaved and deeply rutted, making patrolling
the residential areas a challenge. even in a four wheeled drive vehicle,
and less than efficient on foot. So the logical answer was to deploy the
Communal Police on 21-speed mountain bikes, except. of course, during the
rainy seasons, when even walking the roads is difficult due to very slick,
muddy conditions.
Early on, we recommended to ICITAP the type of equipment we thought would
be appropriate for the project. though we were not allowed to specify a
particular brand, model or manufacturer. 'The decision was made in Washington.
and 'TREK was chosen to supply one hundred, fully "police spec'd" 930 SHX's
with RockShoks. We also included enough tools and spares to leave our African
counterparts with a good, basic, repair shop, along with one hundred and
twenty traffic cones to practice those cone drills.
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