ATLANTA — Israel has long been a U.S. ally, but Atlanta has a special relationship with the country, too.
For more than three decades, law enforcement leaders from around the metro have traveled to Israel to train officers there on best practices in community policing and homeland security.
It’s through a group called the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) based out of Georgia State University and run by a man who called Israel home, Dr. Robert Friedmann.
The most recent delegation traveled to Israel for two weeks in June and included 12 Georgia police chiefs and command staff, three Georgia sheriffs, the former director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and members of the Department of Justice, Georgia Public Safety Training Center, and Georgia Department of Public Safety.
The war in Israel now hits a personal chord with many of those law enforcement leaders, making the images they’re seeing all the more heartbreaking.
Dr. Friedmann couldn’t keep the emotion from his voice as he described his beautiful home country under attack.
“This is a new level of brutality,” Dr. Friedmann said. “It’s human savagery that is simply unacceptable.”
In 1992, Dr. Friedmann started GILEE, an international program that helps train law enforcement around the world.
“It is peer-to-peer on site. These are not simply university classes. You develop a relationship. This is what community policing is all about, that you don’t stay in your office, but you make a human touch,” he said.
He founded the program in anticipation of the 1996 Olympic Games to help with security preparations. He was concerned the Games would set a world stage for terrorism.
In the decades since, his program has built relationships with about 30 countries and 30 states.
Israel is a strong partner. Often a GILEE delegation will take trips to Israel to train on the ground. Some years, the delegation hosts Israeli officers here in Atlanta.
“We have had all of the chiefs of the Atlanta Police participate in it. Many of the chiefs from around the state participate in it,” Dr. Friedmann said.
It’s often a deeply meaningful trip for the people who go.
The most recent delegation that traveled to Israel in June included former GBI Director Michael Register. After the trip, he wrote a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp stating “the program was one of the best leadership experiences I have had in my professional career. . . The discussions that we had with our Israeli peers during the program I believe made each of us better leaders and more prepared.”
Thomson Police Chief Courtney Gale was also on that trip.
“We would have briefings every morning when we would go on excursions. Their hospitality was incredible. They brought us into their homes. They really opened doors to show us what their day-to-day life was,” Chief Gale said.
She says the people they trained became more like family than colleagues over the 15 days they were there.
“We went out into the field, we saw their firing ranges, but then at the same time, we had dinners, we had lunches, so many meals. It incorporates a complete immersion into their culture and their society and understanding the context of what their pursuit of justice means with the religious history that is centuries old,” Chief Gale said.
To see the country now, devastated only four months later, is hard to swallow. Three of the police chiefs they worked with over the summer were killed in the attack, including Lt. Col. JR Davidov, Chief of the Rahat Police, who hosted them this summer.
“He did some wonders doing community policing there. Everyone was very impressed to see him as a promising officer with a tremendous career,” Dr. Friedmann said.
That pain is still raw as the situation in Israel continues to develop.
She hopes her friends and colleagues in Israel are drawing on the training they received this summer as the delegation works to gather aid.
“We have remained in contact. We have been discussing how we can provide assistance to our peers in Israel. It is a relationship that will not dissolve.”
Dr. Friedmann agrees the relationships become “friendships that take place for a lifetime.”
Through the program, cities in Israel and Atlanta have learned from each other. Dr. Friedmann says much of Atlanta’s surveillance camera system is modeled after Israel’s while Israel seeks to create a public-private camera network much like Atlanta’s.
“Tel Aviv is comparable to Atlanta. The city life is the same, so when people are trying to imagine what this is like, think about something catastrophic happening in Atlanta to one of our police stations,” Chief Gale said.
The public can donate to GILEE here.