Self-Sufficiency Still Eludes Domestic Security Forces

A riot broke out, with residents hurling bricks at the officers and accusing them of siding with Sunni insurgents, witnesses said. The U.S. military dispatched helicopters and troops to help stop the violence.

Smith said the bomb was probably planted by Shiite militiamen, not Sunnis, to ignite a confrontation. The Iraqi police recovered well in ensuing days, attending the victims' funerals and meeting with residents to convince them that the unit was not against Shiites, he said.

"That had a bigger influence on the people than anything I could have done," Smith said. The Iraqi police, he added, "could hold their own pretty much."

But, as Smith sipped sweet tea one recent day with the national police commander in the area, it was clear who the boss was. Smith told Lt. Col. Sabah Mohammed that he would continue a ban on vehicles in the market.

Turning to a reporter, Smith said he was also going to cut off temporarily a U.S. contract to clean up garbage, one of many development projects that give the American military leverage in neighborhoods where local governments remain barely functional.

"I'm going to use the delay to tell the leaders of Abu Dsheer that I'm angry they let a VBIED in there," Smith said, referring to a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

The national police are intended to be the cornerstone of Iraq's counterinsurgency force, while the military would be charged with protecting the country from external attack. The forces have added tens of thousands of officers in the past year.

But the national police, with about 42,000 officers, are still well short of the projected goal of about 100,000 and cannot yet cover the country. They do not operate in the autonomous Kurdish region in the north and have failed to reach an agreement to absorb the Kurdish police force, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. Iraq also has tens of thousands of local police officers.

"We don't have air cover to help us to implement our missions. We need more transportation. We need arms. All these things right now are covered by the coalition forces," the chief of the national police, Lt. Gen. Hussein al-Awadi, said in an interview.

Most national police officers have only about three months of instruction, although they are gradually being put through longer courses run by Italy's paramilitary police. Equipment shortages persist.

That was clear on a recent afternoon at a police checkpoint in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora. Staff Sgt. John C. Platt, 34, of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, stopped by for a spot check.

"Do you have a radio?" asked Platt, of Quincy, Ill.