washington | When Charles Ramsey, chief of the police department in Washington, D.C., visited Israel last year, he was impressed with the number of cops he saw on Jerusalem’s streets.
Mickey Levy, then chief of Jerusalem’s police force, told Ramsey that the force was understaffed. But each police cruiser had its blue lights swirling, making them auspicious and giving the impression of police on every corner.
Now, blue and red lights swirl from police cars in the American capital as well, even when they’re just on regular patrol.
“Unfortunately we have a great experience of terrorism in a small arena,” said Levy, now police attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “We don’t have the attitude that we want to teach people, but to prevent the bloodshed we suffered.”
With terrorism increasingly becoming a worldwide threat — as evidenced by the July 7 bombings on London’s public transport system as well as the July 12 suicide bombing at a shopping mall in Netanya — numerous American police forces are turning to Israeli law enforcement leaders to learn best practices from cops who have been facing the threat of terrorism for decades.
While American cooperation with Israeli law enforcement officials is advanced, it’s just getting under way in Europe, partly because of negative attitudes there toward Israel. But British officials are expected to use Israeli knowledge of Muslim terrorist groups in its investigation of last week’s attacks.
“What’s important to the United Kingdom is how these operations are organized, whether it’s British-based or whether the training, information and materials were brought from abroad,” said David Capitanchick, a terrorism expert from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, law enforcement officers from Israel and America have been sharing information on how each force prevents, investigates and restores order after terrorist attacks. Several American Jewish groups have facilitated these educational travel exchanges, aiding police who protect everything from the U.S. Capitol to Disneyland.
The Israeli-aided preparation helped American law enforcement departments ratchet up security in the hours after the London bombings.
In the wake of the London bombings, more European countries may consider Israeli tactics. An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this week that intelligence ties with Britain will be “tightened” after the London attacks, which killed at least 52 people and injured some 700.
England historically is familiar with terrorism because of the Irish Republican Army attacks in the 1980s. In fact, Israeli intelligence on Libya, a major supporter of the IRA and Palestinian terrorist groups, was used at that time.
But the lessons learned from IRA terror attacks were not necessarily helpful in dealing with the threat of Islamic extremism.
In the 1990s, the United Kingdom became a haven for Muslim radicals seeking refuge from hostile regimes, including those in Algeria and Saudi Arabia.
“The U.K. treated them with a great deal of tolerance and didn’t interfere,” Capitanchick said.
That allowed extremist Islamists such as Abu Hamza Al-Masri — the one-eyed, hook-handed cleric whose trial on multiple charges including soliciting the murder of Jews began last week — to recruit and indoctrinate young Muslims in Britain.
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