Bryan Buccini is a deputy with the District 5 Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Just over a month ago, he was a U.S. Army Reserve military policeman training Iraqis to protect their own country.

Buccini, who lives in Spring, served in cities across Iraq training Iraqi police from June 2008 until June 15 of this year.

With the June 30 U.S. troop withdrawal now passed, Buccini looks back on his time in Iraq and doesn’t hesitate to say he wants to return.

“I would be glad to go another time. There were two things I wanted to be: a police officer and a soldier,” he said. “I’ve gotten to do both.”

At left, Bryan Buccini served for a year as a military policeman in Iraq, training Iraqi policemen. He recently returned from Iraq to his job as a deputy with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Buccini enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 2001. For the next five and a half years, Buccini would serve his country once a month with his commitment to the Reserves. The rest of his time was committed to protecting the citizens of Harris County.

But when Operation Iraqi Freedom began in 2003, Buccini wanted to be among the first ones sent.

He would eventually get his turn in 2008 as part of the 302nd MP Company, based out of Huntsville.

Buccini was not the only local law enforcement officer serving in Iraq. Billy Chanthavisouk, a deputy with Harris County Sheriff’s Office District 4, served in the same company and squadron at the same time as Buccini.

Their jobs would be to help train the fledgling Iraqi police force, which for years had been mercilessly attacked by insurgents and members of Al-Qaeda.

“They were getting attacked because they were targets of opportunity,” Buccini said.

What the U.S. military forces were discovering was the Iraqi police force needed to be rebuilt from the ground up and from the inside out. Corruption was rampant, Buccini said, officers were poorly trained, many unaware of how to properly carry a weapon.

Buccini and his company, and others like his, would work closely with the Iraqi police force, developing personal relationships with the precinct chiefs.

“We’d ask about their families. They would show us pictures and we would show them pictures,” he said. “We’d talk about their personal affairs.”

Buccini explained knowing and understanding the Iraqis personally helped the policeman train them more successfully. For example, Buccini said that when teaching an Iraqi how to assemble an AK-47, it wouldn’t necessarily work to tell an officer he was “doing it wrong.”

Instead, Buccini said, an MP would ask to see how an Iraqi assembled the weapon, would voice their approval, but would return later to offer them tips on how better to do it, even saying they had seen another Iraqi assemble the gun better.

“We’d learn their logistics,” he said. “And ask where they needed training. We taught them first aid and how to search cars and people.”

The constant attacks on the Iraqi police force, as well as corruption among the ranks, were factors the MP continuously faced.

“A lot of people quit,” Buccini said, referring to the numerous attacks on volunteer policemen. He also said that often Iraqis would not properly get paid for their duty; police officers were getting paid even when they did not show up for duty.

“It just killed morale,” Buccini said.

Buccini’s company was the target of several attacks, more than 30, he estimated, but none were significant enough to cause a fatality.

“Their weapons weren’t significant enough to slow us down,” Buccini said, but did note several other companies that received more serious attacks, which resulted in fatalities.

The training the U.S. military was providing for the Iraqi police force was working, Buccini said, and as more and more U.S. troops began leaving Iraq, they began turning the security of the embattled country over to its own people.

“I saw a huge change,” he said. “We worked hard to make it a professional force.”

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