Law enforcementMilwaukee studying Israel's homeland security practices
This week, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark along with about a dozen other police chiefs and county sheriffs are visiting Israel to study the country’s homeland security tactics; American law enforcement officials will learn more about Israeli practices in airport security, intelligence analysis and sharing, mass casualty management, and bomb disposal practices; the trip began on 10 April and will conclude on 16 April
This week, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark along with about a dozen other police chiefs and county sheriffs are visiting Israel to study the country’s homeland security tactics.
While there, American law enforcement officials will learn more about Israeli practices in airport security, intelligence analysis and sharing, mass casualty management, and bomb disposal practices.
The trip began on 10 April and will conclude on 16 April.
In a statement, Sheriff Clark said, “The constant homeland security threat faced on a daily basis by Israel since 1948, after the United Nations recognized the re-establishment of a Jewish State in 1947, makes the Israeli police and Israeli National Defense the pre-eminent authorities in terms of homeland security, how to prevent attacks and how to respond to those that do, as far as I’m concerned. I want to learn from them.”
The trip is funded and sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation which was established to promote the exchange of best practices in law enforcement at the state and local level.
Participants will travel throughout the country attending seminars, meeting with top government officials, and touring security facilities.
The sheriff’s visit comes on the heels of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s own trip to Israel in January.
After receiving a briefing on Israeli tactics on aviation security at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International airport, Napolitano declared that the Israeli model would not work at U.S airports.
She explained, “We share a common goal, which is to protect the people of our countries from terror or other attacks. But there are many differences in the United States system versus Israel. Part of that is driven by sheer size.”
Ben-Gurion is Israel’s only major international airport, serving 7.3 million people. In contrast, the United States has 450 major international airports servicing 310 million Americans.
In addition, U.S. airports see an estimated seventy times as much traffic as Israeli airports do each year.
“So there’s a very big difference in terms of size and scale,” said Napolitano.
The Israeli airport model primarily relies on behavioral profiling of travelers rather than pat downs and x-rays like the U.S. model.
