Israeli police impress San Diego contingent

 

By Donald H. Harrison

LA MESA, California–A contingent of San Diego County law enforcement officials who were escorted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on a 10-day visit to Israel in October recently related how impressed they were with that country’s methods and dedication to protecting its citizens from terror.  Four ranking officers also spoke, in a group interview in the offices of La Mesa Police Chief Ed Aceves, about being emotionally moved by their visits to Christian and Jewish religious sites in Israel.

Tammy Gillies, San Diego regional director of the ADL, said five San Diego County law enforcement officials were among a group of 15 from California who met with members of the Israel National Police (INP) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during an intensive Oct. 5-14 study tour. They included Escondido Police Capt. Robert Benton, and the four officers interviewed on Monday, Jan. 27, by San Diego Jewish World.  Those were Aceves; San Diego Assistant Police Chief Walt Vasquez; Oceanside Police Capt. Fred Armijo and San Diego Sheriff’s Captain Mike Barnett.

The officers began by describing how impressed they were by meeting in Jerusalem INP Sergeant Maj. Ronit Tubol, who in Summer 2002 boarded a bus in Jerusalem and was blown through the roof after a suicide bomber activated his vest with 20 pounds of explosives and ball bearings.  Nineteen other passengers perished, but she was propelled to the street where she lay gravely wounded.

“She was a young cop riding on a bus, about eight or nine years ago, when a Palestinian terrorist got on with a suicide pack and blew the bomb up,” related Aceves.  “What was so amazing to me was the grit with which she decided she was going to fight her way back to being a cop.  We (Americans) kind of joked that we have some people with hang nails who are trying to figure out how they can get worker’s compensation.  This gal was literally blown out of the bus and had a brain injury. It took her a year and a half to get back (she had to learn again to walk, speak and write, and she lost hearing in one ear) but she came back as a cop.  Now one of her jobs is in terrorism-related issues as a detective and someone asked her ‘Do you have hatred toward the Palestinians?’ and she responded that she didn’t — that ‘it is what it is, and it happened'”

Vasquez said he was impressed by Tubol’s “inner strength to push forward and to reclaim her life even after very traumatic injuries,” and being in a coma for two weeks.  He added that “it makes, at times, our own personal issues, even our own aches and pains seem ridiculous.”  He noted that Tubol was not required to return to law enforcement; she could have chosen to take another job or to remain at home raising her child, who was nine months old at the time of the explosion.

Armijo noted that the detective’s husband is a captain in the Israel National Police, who ironically had gotten wind of a plot to blow up a bus and had urged her to stay home for a few days until they could catch the terrorist, about whom they had some intelligence. But she insisted on going to work, taking her normal bus route.

“I would wager money that in our system, not knowing the extent of her injuries, they would have retired her out of the service–not by her choice but by the system’s way of doing things,” Armijo said.  “We would have lost out on that caliber of person who is a very productive individual with her organization to this day.”

Barnett said notwithstanding that Tubol almost died, “she has been able to forgive, to the extent that she can, the people who have done that.  She is a remarkable person.”

Gillies created some excitement during the interview when she revealed to the the law enforcement leaders that she is trying to arrange for Tubol and others to visit San Diego as guests of the Anti-Defamation League.  The four officials were asked what they might want Israeli police and military officers to see at their departments.

Armijo, a captain in the Oceanside Police Department, responded “I would show them whatever they would want to see in my police organization, but I would introduce them to as many people as I could so they (Oceanside Police Officers) could see that level of responsibility in people who are so young and how each of those youngsters understood how important their roles are.”

“I would love Ronit to come to my station so I could get as many people as I could to hear her story,” said La Mesa Police Chief Aceves.

“What I would ask the chief (San Diego’s William Lansdowne) to do is designate a time in one of our larger meeting rooms, and have the staff come in and have an hour of Q&A with them,” said San Diego’s Assistant Chief Vasquez.

He added that he also would like to brief Israeli law enforcement on the San Diego Police Department’s equipment, technology and training because there are so many similarities between law enforcement’s missions in San Diego and Israel.  “I’d want to show them our problem-solving, neighborhood and community policing because that’s really a big topic for them right now.  They (the Israelis) are really trying more and more to engage the (different religious) communities because sometimes there are hostilities and hatred going on.”

Barnett said the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department does “a good job reducing crime” and dealing with diverse ethnic populations.  He said he thought Israelis would find it valuable seeing how sheriff’s deputies deal with a variety of situations ranging from an isolated murder–“to attacking a whole crime trend or a spike in crime and how we can harness our resources and focus them and integrate intelligence and operations.”

Another Israeli whom the San Diego County law enforcement leaders admired was an IDF officer identified simply as Major Gilad, who commands a unit on the Lebanese border.  (It is Israel’s policy not to fully identify IDF members actively engaged in military missions).

“The major oozed leadership,” said Armijo.  “Here were 15 law enforcement officials from the West Coast of the United States, many of them chiefs or sheriffs, and he is giving a presentation and as we walk along, he tells us to stop and everyone freezes in their tracks!”

Aceves likened Major Gilad’s motivational talk to those given by Notre Dame’s legendary football coach Knute Rockne.  “I’m telling you right now, he could have told us ‘strap on guns, we are going to get Hezbollah!’ and I’m telling you everyone of us would have been ready.  He had us all, it was so great to see.  He was the essence of what leadership is about!”

The law enforcement officials agreed that there are differences in emphasis between the police missions in San Diego County and throughout Israel.  There, suggested Aceves, police are focused on protecting their country by stopping terrorism, and to a lesser extent do they deal with ordinary crime.  In San Diego County, on the other hand, the missions are reversed: police agencies worry almost exclusively about ordinary crime, with only a tiny percentage of their attention required to be focused on terrorism.

The officers said they all had misgivings before leaving for Israel about how safe they would be in that country, based in the coverage they see on CNN and other television and cable media.  However, within a couple of days of arrival, they got into the rhythm of life, realizing that although the threat is ever-constant, day-to-day life in Israel is more peaceful than in many American cities.  Armijo said he felt confident enough of his safety to go running  early some mornings.

With all the meetings, transportation time, and sightseeing, the trip was jam packed, they agreed.

They said that the trip was memorable not only for what they saw as law enforcement officers, but having been brought up as Catholics or Protestants, for their feelings upon encountering the sites historically associated with the life and death of Jesus.

Barnett said he read the Scriptures his entire life, and remembers looking out the bus window and seeing a road sign pointing to Capernaum, the city near the Sea of Galilee where Jesus did most of his teaching.  “I never thought I would see a road sign of a city named from the New Testament,” Barnett said.  He also recalled a tunnel tour near the Old City of Jerusalem.  “The roofs were low, the air was compressed, and it was late at night, and the guide opened up the Gospel of John and said ‘right here is where Jesus healed the paralytic who way lying by the slalom there.’  He said that everyone agrees, the archaeologists, the theologians, everybody! that happened right here.  It couldn’t have been any other place–right on the dirt we were standing on.  That was an impressive moment!”

Armijo said that while he is Catholic, he is not particularly devout, “but I will never forget that particular moment … and then when we were in the Old City, we passed six or seven markers for the Station of the Corss, and then we were in the Sepulcher Church, and this is where it is believed his body was prepped for burial, the tomb, and where he was crucified, and wow! it was really something that was very hard to describe.  I would have never envisioned being in those places but for this opportunity.”

Aceves said while he was baptized as a Catholic, he is not involved in organized religion. Nevertheless, he also was moved by seeing the religious sites.  He said he described his visits so enthusiastically in email messages to his wife that she wrote back, “Who is this?”

“It was surreal to be in the spots where we were,” Aceves added. “It’s not just about Christianity or the Jewish religion.  People from every type of religion in the world visit the Old City.  You saw them, and they all had their different takes from it.  It was probably for me one of the most religious experiences I had.  It was really impactful for me, and I would extend that to the Sea of Galilee.  It was very impressive.”

Vasquez, while a Catholic, had a special religious moment at a site associated with Judaism.  Standing at the the Wall, Ha Kotel, “I touched it, and I really can’t describe it–but momentarily I had this total sense of peace and that, in the scheme of things, there is something much more important than us as a whole, and that is faith, I think.  Maybe it is how you are expected to treat others and how you are expected to act.  I touched it three or four times to get that feeling and it was absolutely amazing because the people around it were all so different, but, at least at that time, everyone was together.”

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com