Palestinian Law Enforcement Officials Confer with Pasadena Police Oversight Group

 

[Updated February 18, 2016 | 11:45 a.m.]   Members of Pasadena’s Coalition for Increased Oversight of Pasadena Police (CICOPP) met with officials of the Palestinian Presidential Guard and Civil Police Wednesday afternoon at All Saints Church. The meeting was part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored International Visitor Leadership program.

The six members of the Palestinian law enforcement community — Nasser Abuhanani, Palestinian Civil Police; Brigadier General Khaled Hammad, Palestinian Presidential Guard; Issam Alzir, Palestinian Presidential Guard; Colonel Mohammad Sawalmeh, Palestinian Civil Police; Lieutenant Colonel Ghaleb Mosen, Palestinian Presidential Guard; and Lt. Colonel Monhammad Yasin, of the Palestinian Presidential Guard — discussed through translators the difficulties of policing in the West Bank.

Among the problems they cited is the inability of the Palestinian Police to arrest Israeli settlers in Section A of the West Bank, one of several areas into which the West Bank is divided. The officers pointed to a recent case of a Palestinian family allegedly firebombed by Israeli settlers. They said Israeli police failed to arrest and prosecute the accused perpetrators.

Reflecting on the meeting, local civil rights attorney Dale Groneimeir said this morning that “with a ruthless Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, Palestine Authority police are put into a hopelessly compromised position.”

Groneimeir wrote that the Palestinian situation was “the equivalent of the Pasadena Police Department trying to police Northwest Pasadena with batons but the Sheriff coming in with automatic weapons anytime there was any incident with White people, using excessive force with Black and Brown residents, and ignoring the crimes of White residents.  The situation of the men we talked with and their police officers has no comparison to whatever problems we have in Pasadena.”

The Palestinian officers have visited a number of American police departments, including Pasadena’s, and the LA County Sheriffs’ Department, as part of their program, “Towards a Safe and Secure World: International Peace and Security,” which will run through February 26.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said the purpose of the 21-day program was to expose the Palestinian officers to many facets of law enforcement in the United States.

Among them, methods used in U.S. criminal investigations and prosecutions. insight into the development by American law enforcement agencies of improved non-lethal use-of-force techniques, internal corruption counter-measures and relationships with minority communities.