Atlanta Police Department Chief Erika Shields has resigned after an APD officer shot and killed Rayshard Brooks.
The interim police chief is Rodney Bryant, a 30 year veteran of the Atlanta police.
But already the modern antisemites are going after him – because, among his 2800 hours of professional training and certifications, he went to Israel and attended a seminar on policing. The bigots are assuming that this black man has been brainwashed by Israel to kill…..black men, as someone whose Twitter handle is the Hebrew transliteration of “Antifa” and Jewish Voice for Peace – people who tirelessly lie about Israel’s cooperation with US and other police – are saying:
The haters aren’t actually reading what Bryant said about what he learned in Israel. Everyone should, though:
Rodney Bryant, Major, Atlanta Police Department (2014)
“One of our greatest challenges in American policing is serving a community that is vastly more diverse than the local police department. Comparatively, the Israeli police are responsible for serving a variety of demographics. I was impressed by the level of community policing efforts employed by the Israeli Police to build relationships and maintain peace among such diverse populations. The mentor shadowing was considerably inimitable and having the opportunity to observe the daily operation of a station and its command staff was enlightening. Although generally ensuring public safety was important, understanding the concerns of the community was equally significant. While we share similar roles and duties as leaders, it was invaluable to witness and learn of methods other leaders have adopted to address policing issues. As a result of the training, I was able to successfully incorporate several of the strategies that I learned from the exchange to help improve my leadership and efforts in the communities where I serve as a police executive. GILEE provides a formidable degree of leadership training that cannot be matched. As proclaimed so often by other GILEE Alums, it is indeed “a training of a life time.”
Contrary to how the haters represent Israeli (and US) police, there is a keen interest in working together with the community and to understand its diversity – the exact kind of things that most thoughtful people who want police reform are demanding. In fact, the last training between Israeli and Georgia police in 2019 concentrated on community policing in the best possible way:
Community policing, “a policy and a strategy aimed at achieving more effective and efficient crime control, reduced fear of crime, improved quality of life, improved police services and police legitimacy, through a proactive reliance on community resources that seeks to change crime-causing conditions,” was the focus again this year.
Community policing assumes a need for greater accountability of police, a greater public share in decision-making and a greater concern for civil rights and liberties, according to Robbie Friedmann, who formulated the definition. A professor emeritus at Georgia State University and GILEE’s founding director, he led this year’s delegation.
The haters pretend – with no evidence – that Israel is teaching US cops to be violent racists. The actual training is quite the opposite. In fact, if all US police would be trained in Israel instead of a few dozen every year, there were be far fewer incidents of police brutality than we have been seeing.
In fact, after the brutal murder of Michael Brown Jr. by a white Ferguson police officer in 2014, there was pressure for Ferguson police to reform and learn to embrace diversity. After turnover of police chiefs, in 2019 they hired Jason Armstrong as their chief. He himself has marched with protesters in George Floyd demonstrations. He can hardly be accused of being a racist police officer.
And he attended training in Israel as well where he learned about – diversity:
What I was most impressed with about the program was learning how the Israeli Police force was trying new ways to bring diversity to their police force and their police leadership. Diversity and representation is one of the main points of contention in American law enforcement. Communities are speaking out about police departments having a balanced representation of the communities they serve. It was eye opening to see those same sentiments were holding true in Israel. We got to visit and meet with police academy recruits who were taking advantage of a program to assist people from the Arab communities in Israel with passing the entrance test into the police academy. We learned about leadership training programs specifically for female officers so they could flourish as leaders in the organization.
The only hate in this story is the antisemitism of the “anti-racists” who try to smear upstanding, respected, black police officers and leaders based only on the fact that they attended a seminar in Israel. These white bigots are trying to defame respected, black police leaders as racists (and liars who are not accurately portraying what they learned in Israel.)
Who are the real racists?