Officer Jim Barrett is a good cop, as close to a beat cop as Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood will ever get.

 

Technically, he is our Community Service Officer, going to neighborhood meetings, handing out his cell phone number and listening to our concerns. But one can easily find him on the streets, too.

 

The last time I attended an Asylum Hill NRZ meeting, I saw Barrett give a crime report. The gritty portrait he painted differed from the rosy picture pitched by the higher-ups in the Mayor’s Office, the Superintendent of Schools and the Hartford Police Department.

 

I’m sure he took some heat about this, and he didn’t deserve to. That night, before the meeting, I managed to ask him a few questions about his two tours of duty in Iraq with the Connecticut Army National Guard’s 1048th Light Truck division.

 

Grant Barrett his reticence because the stakes that his statements about Iraq could be misconstrued are much higher. Upsetting Chief Daryl Roberts and Mayor Eddie Perez is one thing, pissing off Gen. David Petreus and George W. Bush is another.

 

Barrett says he remains neutral about his service in Iraq.

 

“I don’t have an opinion about the war,” Barrett said. “I don’t follow the politics of it. I care about my soldiers and the mission and I want them to be safe. My concern is bringing my guys back home safe. I do what I have to do.”

 

Barrett spent more than 14 months in Iraq. Prior to getting called up in May 2006, his last tour of duty was back in 2001 in Bosnia, going after Taliban training camps. He returned to the U.S. in September 2007.

 

“I was stop-lossed for two years,” Barrett said, noting that his active duty included training here in the U.S. “We had guys out of the service who went on with their life after two years.” And they got called back up, just like our favorite local crime fighter.

 

It’s good to see Barrett back in the city. I find it comforting to walk into the Asylum Street branch of the Hartford Federal Credit Union and see him on patrol, warding off armed robbers.

 

After I heard that gunman managed a heist at my bank branch, I felt somewhat unsafe, so I can only imagine the staff’s fears and anxieties. HPD’s after-the-fact presence does calm some jitters.

 

While I have some disagreements about the concept of armed public safety officers protecting wealth, preserving the rights of private property is an essential ingredient in a stable society. And Barrett, in my opinion, belongs protecting Hartford, not Baghdad.

 

Yet Barrett makes a cogent argument for an American presence in a country the United States destroyed (my words, not his). The perception that the Iraqi people don’t like GIs is wrong.

 

“The bottom line – the people loved us there," Barrett said. "The locals love you because they feel safe.”

 

He served alongside Aussies, Mongolians, Japanese, and Brits, both in Bosnia and in Iraq. He judged the reactions of people when they see Americans compared to others.

 

“When they see Americans, it’s a safe haven,” he said. “We’re safer than their own people.”

 

He blamed the unrest on not just insurgents, but gangsters in Baghdad. And patrolling those streets in the cradle of civilization is not much different than Connecticut’s capital city.

 

“The locals live in fear, just like here in the city,” Barrett said.
“It’s gangs. Gangs do whatever they need because they don’t follow the rules.”

 

No matter how urgent he sees the need for U.S. troops in Iraq, Barrett doesn’t want to return to Iraq.

 

“Oh hell no, I don’t want to go back. I value life,” Barrett said. "I will not volunteer to go back. If I am called up, I'll do what I have to do. I am here serve to my country."

 

Not even to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars working for Blackwater as a “civilian contractor?”

 

“No money in the world could get me back there as a volunteer,” he said. “I could make six figures a year. But I see the contractors getting blown up. You could pay me a million dollars a year. I would not go back unless called up again.”

 

That’s probably because Barrett had one of the more dangerous missions in Iraq.

 

“We were gun truck security, escorting convoys,” Barrett said. “I was one of the lead truck commanders, seeking out IEDs. The rest of the convoy followed 200 meters behind us.”

 

Barrett downplays the fact that he survived the so-called Highway of Death between Basra and Baghdad. But he is honest about his state of mind while in the occupied country.

 

“Every day you didn’t know if I would live or die,” Barrett said.
“Between getting blown up by IEDs and getting shot at, we went from Kuwait, to Mosul, via Baghdad to the Iran border.”

 

His boast that he knows the streets of Baghdad better than Hartford retains its credulity. Especially when he talks of the intensity of the experience. Finding religion on patrol is real.

 

“People who were not believers are believers,” he said. “My unit had people wounded, but no one got killed. Good soldiers think outside the box, and that’s how they survive.”

 

But today is a new day, he said.

 

Will the troops ever leave?

 

“It depends on President Bush, or the next president,” Barrett said. “They’re the ones that call the shots.”

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