Local Marine helped set up Iraqi police force

First Lt. Victor Lance of New Hope helped create and train police in Haditha in western Iraq.

By: Linda Seida
   The suicide bombing that killed 35 people and wounded 58 at a police recruiting center Sunday in Baghdad struck at the heart of the work of a local Marine who recently served in Iraq.
   First Lt. Victor Lance, of New Hope, has been a Marine since May 2003. He said he believes one of the "biggest contributions" he performed during his time in Iraq was the creation and training of a local police force in Haditha in western Iraq. The job also was "borderline impossible," he said.
   Insurgents decimated a police force in 2004. Some were killed; others fled.
   By the time Lt. Lance was given the task of recruiting local men to form another force, there were "no police whatsoever," he said. Anyone who expressed an interest in joining was scared off by the insurgents with "murder and intimidation."
   Lt. Lance, 26, had no police training and no specific knowledge of police recruitment. A business major in college, his first "real job" out of college was the Marine Corps, he said. He began as a logistics officer.
   He graduated from New Hope-Solebury High School in 1999 and attended Villanova University on an Naval ROTC scholarship. He graduated in 2003 with a major in business management.
   His desire to serve in the Marines was inspired by his father, Victor, a 20-year Marine, and his grandfather, Jim Beck, who also was a Marine. Mr. Beck was a teacher and one-time principal at New Hope-Solebury.
   Lt. Lance was deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, from February to September. As the officer in charge of the Battalion Police Transition Team, he tried at first to recruit from within the Haditha region. Because intimidation tactics continued to keep new recruits away, he turned to northern Iraq where he finally met success.
   After three months, he had recruited and trained about 250 qualified men. One, in a serendipitous bit of good fortune, actually turned out to be a former Iraqi police chief and went on to lead the new recruits.
   "It was a good start," Lt. Lance said. "We’re making progress."
   The recruits "committed their lives and potentially put their families on the line," he said Nov. 9, his last night home on leave before he flew back to Marine Corps Base Hawaii located in Kaneohe, Hawaii.
   The bombing Sunday of the police recruiting center in Baghdad where Lt. Lance’s recruits had spent eight to 10 weeks training highlights the dangers Lt. Lance faced in Iraq. But the day after the tragedy, he concentrated not on the danger, but on the ongoing need to continue despite the risks.
   "It reiterates how large of a target the police are there and how important it is we set them up for success and (that) they are properly equipped and trained in order to face the enemy," Lt. Lance said.