The Post being the Post, and the Greater Washington DC Area being what it is -- full of intrigue, espionage, Spooky Business, and about a million potentially-hostile foreigners scattered through a population of three million non-foreigners most of whom take great pains (not to mention prescription drugs) not to notice anything -- you have to take this Post story with a grain of salt, so to speak.
Threat Theater is what they call "practice in place" in some certain other professions. But for special agents in training, it's hard to tell what's real from what's fake, and that is supposed to be a good thing.
What's happening is Role-Playing, or Street Theater.
Trained actors are simulating a variety of "characters", of the sort with whom agents need to be prepared to deal. To make training more realistic, they're role-playing "on street" so as to take the situation out of the classroom and put it where it will actually take place in real life.
As the Post article, tells, however, it's quite possible for uninvolved and uninformed citizens to not understand that this is a training exercise. This can cause any sort of reaction from consternation to, presumably, citizen intervention.
"Watching the Detectives" is, for some, a hobby. For others, of course, it's the course of business of a supervisor keeping his charges on the straight and narrow.
Of course, sometimes the people who are watching the detectives are the people that the detectives are trying to watch. There's an excellent opinion piece in today's Post, from professionals and a professor of law-enforcement: It's Time to Legalize Drugs (Moskos, Peter, and Franklin, Stanford, Washington Post, "Editorials", August 17, 2009).
It doesn't much surprise me that there are professionals in law-enforcement who don't think much of continuing a seriously flawed "war on drugs" that has is summarized best with two words: Epic Fail.
Seriously, I recall a strange moment of honesty some time ago. I like to challenge people's beliefs. For example, if they believe that I am inevitably destined to do this or that, for example, to drive recklessly off of a cliff, I like to disappoint them... especially if their professional reputation depends on their ability to "pigeonhole" people, and all the more so if their professionalism was something they paid to be told in a class. If they paid to be told that people of a certain "type" will act the same way, count on it, I want to make them doubt their professors and I want people to doubt them. This isn't about them being wrong in the first place, nad it's not even really about me being an exception to the rules. It's about making people question why they believe what they believe.
I was in some class or another, and we had just finished the lesson on the Prohibition. Someone -- it might have been me -- asked the instructor "so, if the ultimate result of the Prohibition was widespread citizen discontent and distrust of law-enforcement, corruption of law-enforcement and politicians, and the enrichment and empowerment of Organized Crime, how does that Prohibition differ from the Prohibition against recreational drugs?"
The instructor fumed for about three seconds and said "that was about alcohol. This is about drugs!" and the instructor managed to fill their voice with all sorts of disgust at that final word... which is what I hear is exactly how Carrie Nation used to finish her sentences denouncing the filth of Drink.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us, You Have Only Epic Fail.
Back to the lead story, watching the detectives who paid good money to be told that stereotypes all behave and appear identically, watching them scare the cottage cheese out of unsuspecting civilians, well, how are the poor citizens to know that what they're seeing is agents-in-training, and not really scary things happening right next door?
It's simple.
If what you see isn't as totally confused and bizarre as in the previous videos, it's not real. It's just a training operation. Do not get involved. In particular, do not call the police. Do not call anyone. It's just training.
The Washington Post says so.
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