Afraid the cops will learn how to deal with Antifa.
Via TOI:
A North Carolina city council issued a statement against local police participating in international exchange programs that offer “military-style” training, after pro-Palestinian activists launched a petition against the force sending delegates to Israel, which it accused of “using tactics of extrajudicial killing.”
After a two-hour debate Monday night, the Durham City Council put out the statement, which opened by citing a memo from Police Chief Cerelyn C. J. Davis that said: “There has been no effort while I have served as chief of police to initiate or participate in any exchange to Israel, nor do I have any intention to do so.”
A former police chief did participate in such an exchange program.
The statement declared the “council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training since such exchanges do not support the kind of policing we want here in the City of Durham.”
The council statement was in response to a petition by the Demilitarize from Durham2Palestine group of organizations which called for ending cooperation with Israel. Among those included in the umbrella group are Jewish Voice for Peace — Triangle, Durham for All, Inside-Outside Alliance, and Black Youth Project 100.
Former Durham police chief Jose Lopez, who traveled to Israel on an exchange visit in the past, told local WRAL television that the petition misrepresents what happens on the programs.
“The training that I got had all to do with managing major crisis situations where bombings had occurred, shootings, things of that nature. Things that really a lot of Americans need to concern themselves with now,” Lopez said. “Nothing of the training had anything to do with militarization.”
During the debate, Mayor Steve Schewel, who is Jewish, said that “so many people are being given completely false information that our police are training with the Israeli army and would be again … it’s so damaging to police-community relations,” the Heraled Sun reported.
“If you want to make change in the American Jewish community’s response to what’s happening in Israel and Palestine, then you have to be truthful,” Schewel continued. “Remember who we are as Jews. I’m 67. Six years before I was born … the Holocaust wiped out half of us on earth.”