The job of the university isn’t always about teaching students in a traditional classroom.
“The university’s mission is also about community service, research and enterprise,” said Robbie Friedmann, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at Georgia State University who founded a program there that turns the real world into a learning environment.
“That’s what we’re doing here – reaching out to the citizens of the earth.”
That’s happening through the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange, housed at GSU’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, where the “students” are police, law and security officials who turn to the university’s expert faculty to tackle problems in their communities across the globe.
Friedmann launched the program in the early 1990s when Atlanta was facing a security challenge: hosting the 1996 Olympic Games.
“When the announcement came in 1990, I had two reactions: To be in an Olympic city was a dream, and the second was, ‘What are we getting into?’” said Friedmann, who grew up in Israel. “I thought immediately of Munich 1972.”
Those games, during which 11 Israeli Olympians were killed by Palestinian terrorists, inspired Friedmann to team Atlanta law enforcement officials with colleagues in Israel who could share their security knowledge.
At the same time, police contacts in his homeland wanted their senior officers to learn more about constitutional, civil and human rights, and how those ideals play into policing policies.
“I had no clue how to do that,” Friedmann said. “But I thought it would make sense to have officers from Georgia share their experiences.”
The first cross-cultural training happened in 1992, and following the Olympics, the program expanded its reach to law enforcement and security organizations across the country.
“We now have programs in 25 states and 25 countries, and have about 1,800 graduates,” said Friedmann. “We became the go-to for law enforcement development around anti-crime and terrorism measures.”
GILEE’s Executive Director Steve Heaton, a former police chief in Georgia, adds that the goal of the program isn’t to teach police or military tactics.
“We’re teaching leadership and operational skills with briefings on police-related issues on a variety of topics,” he said. “We still do Olympic support – the last one was in Rio de Janeiro – but primarily it’s peer-to-peer training.”
GILEE recently hosted a group of Bahamian law enforcement leaders who met with different agencies in Atlanta to see how an American system works. GILEE trainers also made a recent trek to Israel to talk to law officials there about the challenges they deal with.
“While there are differences between other countries’ and our policing in the U.S., we all have same types of issues – such as how to build trust in our communities,” said Heaton. “At the same time, our folks learn about things like the kind of technology other countries are using to address and solve crime.”
Those sorts of exchanges provide rare educational and training opportunities, Heaton added. “It’s another way to receive training you wouldn’t usually get, to get the gist of what it’s like in another country to police within their structures. And there’s a benefit to seeing how other countries deal with similar problems and to talk with peers overseas.”
Information about GILEE is online at gilee.gsu.edu.
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Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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