32,000 Iraq police 'lost,' more on payroll

WASHINGTON, June 12 (UPI) -- About 32,000 Iraqi police who have been trained and equipped are no longer on the job, having left for various reasons over the last 18 months.

And as many as 12,000 police not on the job are drawing salaries anyway, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who has just returned from more than two years in Iraq overseeing the development of Iraqi security forces.

The United States has overseen the training and equipping of more than 194,000 Iraqi police. But a data check in January revealed that over the last 18 months, 32,000 of them are no longer coming to work.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqi police have been killed in action. Another 6,000 to 8,000 have been severely wounded, Dempsey told a House Armed Services subcommittee Tuesday.

At least 5,000 Iraqi police have deserted and the rest are unaccounted for.

That means there are at most 162,000 trained and equipped police in Iraq. But there may be as many as 75,000 more policemen drawing a salary.

Getting exact numbers is difficult because there is no single automated database that can accurately track that figure.

"We have been getting better and better visibility on what's really out there, to the point where now there is something between 60,000 and 75,000 policemen on the payroll over the authorization and untrained by us," he said.

Of the additional untrained police, 10 percent to 20 percent are "ghosts" -- just names on the payroll to collect a salary, he said.

No database can yet answer another question: How many police deserters are now in jail for insurgent activity?

"At this point in time the databases don't talk to each other, and I've invested some money within the last six months to try to make that happen," he said.