Counterinsurgency Cops: Military tactics fight street crime

The following is a script from "Counterinsurgency Cops" which aired on May 5, 2013. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Andrew Metz, producer.

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers have been waging what's known as counterinsurgency. They're supposed to be both warriors and community builders, going village to village driving out insurgents while winning the hearts and minds of the population. But counterinsurgency has had mixed results - at best.

We met a Green Beret who is finding out -- in his job as a police officer -- that the strategy might actually have a better chance of working, right here at home, in the USA.

Call him and his fellow officers counterinsurgency cops! They're not fighting al Qaeda or the Taliban, but street gangs and drug dealers in one of the most crime ridden cities in New England.

[Mike Cutone: Turning now, turning now on Orchard.]

Mike Cutone is a Massachusetts state trooper, part of a special unit targeting gang crime in the city of Springfield.

[Mike Cutone: Put your hands behind your back, stop resisting! Read him his rights in Spanish. Get the gun?]

He's also a Green Beret, who - after returning from Iraq - had an "aha moment" when he was talking to a gas station manager in Springfield.

Mike Cutone: Gang members would come in there, pull out a weapon, point it at employees or patrons, take what they want and walk out. No one was calling the Springfield Police and no one was calling the state police.

Lesley Stahl: What this community was dealing with was gangs. They are a criminal enterprise. How are they like insurgents in Iraq?

Mike Cutone: Insurgents and gang members both want to operate in a failed area, a failed community or a failed state. They know they can live off the passive support of the community, where the community is not going to call or engage the local police.

The similarities to the Iraqi town he had lived in and defended were so striking, that he sat down and wrote out an action plan for Springfield.

Mike Cutone: We had this concept of what we would call a pilot team, where you would handpick select troopers, give them specific training and embed them in the community and start winning over the community.

He proposed his plan, a counterinsurgency program, to Springfield's deputy police chief, John Barbieri.

Lesley Stahl: But he was saying he was going to bring military tactics into an American city. I mean, you must have had some qualms about that.

John Barbieri: Well once it became clear that he wasn't talking about checkpoints or fast roping from helicopters, that he was talking about going door to door organizing the neighborhood into a collaboration to report crime, to get involved in solving their own problems, it became obvious to me that that was exactly the type of program I needed for this neighborhood.

Barbieri and trooper Cutone took us to a housing project in that neighborhood, known as the North End.

Lesley Stahl: I heard that there were gang members on motorcycles with AK-47s on their backs, right out here-

John Barbieri: They were very well-organized. They had lookouts. They disappeared when the sector cars came.

Lesley Stahl: They were just riding right up here in front?

John Barbieri: They were establishing the fact that this was their territory and they were willing to fight to keep it.

Deputy Police Chief Barbieri was desperate for a way to break the gangs' hold on the community. So three years ago he agreed to let Cutone and a small team of elite troopers -- most of them war veterans too - target the North End, which had become a violent marketplace for some of the cheapest heroin in the whole country.

In addition to drug busts, they walked the streets, knocked on doors, hung out in neighborhood shops trying to woo the locals.

[Mike Cutone: Here for pastries today, food?

Woman: Yes

Mike Cutone: Outstanding, this is the best place in Springfield!]

But there was a lot of skepticism: Not everyone welcomed the troopers.

Mike Cutone: I could remember one door, the last knock of the day I had. A grandmother comes out and she just tee'd off on me. Wanted nothing to do with me, used colorful language, said the police were racist, etc., etc.

But they kept at it, almost daily.

[Mike Cutone: Trooper Mike Cutone, nice to see you, sir.]

And eventually began developing sources and tips.

Mike Cutone: We're not just using bad guys for information and getting information. We're using the other 99 percent of the population that live there. Winning them over. They become our eyes and ears. And the floodgates have opened for criminal information that we can go after now.

Lesley Stahl: The floodgates have opened?

Mike Cutone:: Yes, they have.

Lesley Stahl: That much?

Mike Cutone: Yes, that much. Myself and the other troopers, my phone is ringing constantly, every day, either text messages, they'll send me pictures of where they located guns, they'll send me e-mails of who's selling drugs.

One of the keys to building trust in Iraq, Cutone says, was having his counterinsurgency team move into the town, sending a message: "We're not going away."

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but eventually you drive off.

Mike Cutone: We do drive off, but when we drive off, we've given them a template on how to control their town independently and without fear.

With the uncertainty about counterinsurgency's ultimate success overseas, the troopers and local police are determined to build something permanent in Springfield.

[Mike Cutone: As always, remember why we are here.]

And essential to that is a regular Thursday "elders" meeting. Local residents come together with politicians, police, health and housing organizations, educators, businessmen and Latino leaders.

Lesley Stahl: So how important are these meetings to the overall mission?

Mike Cutone: They're crucial. What we found out is you had all these different groups that do good work for low income folks in troubled areas. None of 'em were talking with each other. So the Thursday meeting brought all these people together. Karen Pullman, a nurse from Baystate, raises her hand at one Thursday meeting and says, "Hey, I want to create a walking school bus." We're, like, "What's a walking school bus? That's great."

Fear of the gangs was so high that parents and kids were often afraid to walk the streets.

Mike Cutone: Carlos, Miguel, nice to meet you Carlos.

Now, big burley troopers and teachers walk neighborhood kids to school. It's a strong visual message to the families there that the troopers and police are protecting their children and taking control of the streets back from the gangs.

Mike Cutone: And that's the beauty of the Thursday meeting. It's empowering the residents and the people that come to it.

Kit Parker: Lesley, they're just like the village elder meetings I was doing in every village I patrolled in-- in Afghanistan.

Major Kit Parker is a professor of engineering at Harvard. He also led counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

Kit Parker: The key thing with counterinsurgency based on my experience is: Make a friend. Make a friend. I don't have to find the enemy, I have to find a friend. If you find your friends, they're going to take ya to your enemy.

He was on National Guard training one weekend two years ago, telling a group from his unit that he wanted to find a police department to test out using counterinsurgency against gangs. Believe it or not Mike Cutone was in his unit.

Mike Cutone: And then I shared with him, hey we're doing this in Springfield and his eyes lit up.

Lesley Stahl: His eyes lit up? His jaw dropped is what he told us.

Mike Cutone: Yeah.

Kit Parker: He said he had a bad gang problem in the north end of Springfield. He said people were riding around on motorcycles with assault rifles slung over their back. And I got this vision of Mogadishu. I got this vision of Kandahar Province where I saw this all the time. Two guys on a motorcycle, one's got a AK-47 on his back. And then I told Mike, I said: "I teach a class at Harvard. Let me see if I can bring this class in on this."

And so, last spring, Parker turned his junior engineering class into a counterinsurgency lab.

Kit Parker: Help me understand what kind of intelligence I need to collect when I am in the field, whether it is in the North End, I'm on Main Street standing by the taco truck, or if I am in Kandahar City. That's the kind of data I need.

Parker had his students with their computer smarts develop software for intelligence collection. With it, the troopers are building a database of gang members, similar to what Special Forces are doing overseas.

[Trooper: You have to do tattoos.]

The troopers collect data as they book suspects; like criminal histories and tattoos.

[Trooper: Two tear drops.]

And use the information to make maps of the gangs' social networks - who they know and who they associate with. Once a gang's key figures are identified, the troopers try and remove them from the streets in hopes of fracturing the entire network.

[Mike Cutone: Hi ma'am, how are you doing today?]

Cutone brought Parker and his students onto the streets of Springfield so the class could survey the residents to see if any of the symptoms of that failed community had been alleviated.

Kit Parker: They took a look at everything from STD rates in neighborhoods where you have gang activity. Litter, graffiti, school attendance, all of these things.

They found that since the counterinsurgency operation started, North End schools have seen fewer discipline problems and drug offenses and that litter and gang graffiti is no longer everywhere in sight -- important indicators, Parker says, that the community is no longer totally under the gangs' control.

Kit Parker: What we're seeing is that the number of calls for service is going up in the North End. So that means--

Lesley Stahl: They're reporting crime.

Kit Parker: That's right. They're reporting crime. And I see, that means the legitimacy of the Mass State Police and the Springfield PD has increased. And the residents of the North End realize they are their instrument to clean up their neighborhood.

Teddy Cupack: I've been robbed 55 times that the police know about, but not lately.

At the Thursday community meeting we attended, residents like Teddy Cupak said this is the first time the police have really made a difference in the North End.

Teddy Cupak: This is what I want to get across, this concept does work. It sort of flushes them out. I don't know where they go. I hope they get help.

Mike Cutone: Well, hey, Teddy, some of 'em are going to work, and some are going to jail and some leave.

Teddy Cupak: That's right.

[Mike Cutone: That's my cell number, don't give my cell number out. I don't want to get prank phone calls at three in the morning. If you are really looking for a job, we know a guy that hires kids and puts them to work doing construction work.]

Lesley Stahl: But let me ask you something. Those functions that you are performing, that sounds to me like a social service job instead of a police job.

Mike Cutone: If the government is not going to do it, or individuals aren't going to do it, why can't the police provide leadership or partner up with the community and say, "Hey, here's a plan. This is what we want to do to help." Because the status quo of traditional policing, it ain't just gonna work. It's not gonna work.

Lesley Stahl: But you are still making drug arrests.

Mike Cutone: But see you are misconstruing it like you're going to eliminate drugs completely. You're not. What you want to do is reduce it to a level where you can manage it and then single them out one by one versus having it rampant throughout the city.

Springfield police say they are managing it in their target neighborhood of the North End where, they say, violent crime fell last year by 25 percent. Drug offenses dropped nearly 50 percent.

[Mike Cutone: How long ago did that happen, sir?]

To show us how they're using the tips they're getting to fracture the gang networks, Cutone took us on a nighttime drug raid.

[Police radio: Target's out, target's out.]

It was like a military operation, adapted in interesting ways for an American city.

Mike Cutone: They are in what looks a bread truck, an unmarked bread truck.

But the bread truck was filled with a SWAT team, looking like soldiers riding into battle.

[Police officers: State police, search warrant! State police search warrant!]

As they burst in, someone on the second floor hurled something out the window.

Lesley Stahl: What do they got?

Cop: Looks like a Glock.

A semi-automatic pistol. They also found around five grams of heroin and arrested three young men the police say are drug dealers, members of a local gang -- one of them just 15 years old. But that wasn't the most important thing the team did that night.

Very quickly, Cutone and the troopers turned their attention to the neighbors.

Mike Cutone: I'm sorry, what is your name?

Carlos: Carlos.

Mike Cutone: Carlos, nice to meet you. I like your rosary, I got one in my pocket.

Even on these kinds of operations, they put on the charm offensive.

Mike Cutone: We want to engage these other folks and let them know what's going on and why we're here.

Lesley Stahl: And that was part of the operation?

Mike Cutone: Absolutely.

This summer, Mike Cutone and his Army unit are being deployed to teach counterinsurgency to the Afghan forces. Having brought what he learned at war home, he now wants to bring what he's learned on the streets of Springfield back to Afghanistan.

[Mike Cutone: Good to see you, you take care.]