Afghan National Police students experience biometrics system

BAMYAN, Afghanistan — New stu­dents enter­ing the Afghan Nation­al Police Non­com­mis­sioned Offi­cer Course at Bamyan Region­al Train­ing Cen­ter expe­ri­enced the bio­met­rics record sys­tem first­hand.

A new non­com­mis­sioned offi­cer course stu­dent looks through an eye scan­ner dur­ing an in pro­cess­ing event at Bamyan Region­al Train­ing Cen­ter, Afghanistan, Dec. 13, 2011. The eye scan­ner is part of the bio­met­rics infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed to cre­ate a stu­dent file. Click to enlarge

Fifty-four Afghans aspir­ing to join the Afghan Nation­al Police go through in pro­cess­ing at the begin­ning of their 16-week course. 

“The in pro­cess­ing serves two pur­pos­es. One is to build per­son­nel data­bas­es, and two is to be aware of who is join­ing the Afghan secu­ri­ty forces,” said Staff Sgt. Luis Badil­lo, Bamyan Region­al Train­ing Cen­ter advisor. 

A six-man team takes the stu­dents’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion, fin­ger­prints and more as part of a two-day in pro­cess­ing event. 

“We take their infor­ma­tion, col­lect bio­met­rics and then they get a phys­i­cal exam by our doc­tor,” said Zabin, in-pro­cess­ing team lead. “Usu­al­ly we do this activ­i­ty with 12 peo­ple but we are mak­ing it work with only six.” 

Zabin’s team in processed five to six stu­dents an hour each day. The stu­dents moved through five dif­fer­ent sta­tions. At the first sta­tion the student’s basic infor­ma­tion is record­ed. The sec­ond sta­tion takes their pic­ture for an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card while the third and fourth sta­tions are used to col­lect bio­met­rics. The fifth sta­tion is the med­ical exam. 

The med­ical exam con­sists of six immu­niza­tions, an eye exam and a phys­i­cal exam. 

“I give the stu­dents (shots to pre­vent) typhoid, menin­gi­tis, polio, MMR, Hepati­tis B and D/T,” said Adman, the team’s doc­tor. “I also give the stu­dents a phys­i­cal exam to make sure they are healthy enough to go through the course.” 

The first day the team col­lect­ed urine sam­ples for drug screening. 

“We test for meth(amphetamine), cocaine, THC and opi­ates,” said Zabin. “If any stu­dent tests pos­i­tive we noti­fy the site com­man­der right away.” 

The infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed from the in-pro­cess­ing team will be used to keep track of the stu­dents dur­ing their stay at the train­ing cen­ter. The infor­ma­tion is also read­i­ly avail­able if some­thing was to hap­pen to one of the students. 

“It is impor­tant to get this infor­ma­tion from the stu­dents to know if their back­ground and his­to­ry,” said one of the Afghan train­ing instruc­tors. “We must know who is join­ing the ANP.” 

The Afghan peo­ple must be able to trust their law enforce­ment per­son­nel. Obtain­ing bio­met­rics on indi­vid­u­als who want to join is a mod­ern way of elim­i­nat­ing untrust­wor­thy applicants. 

Source:
U.S. Army 

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