LEEP Participant Sheriff Adam Christianson in the Modesto Bee
Sheriff talks terrorism, national security at Modesto gathering
By Deke Farrow
Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson spoke at a gathering Thursday about his recent 10-day trip to Israel, during which he exchanged ideas and learned from its law enforcement, military and government leaders.
He told a Latino Community Roundtable luncheon audience that the Middle Eastern country places a higher importance on national security than on individual privacy. Israelis basically “live in a neighborhood surrounded by folks who want to kill them,” he said.
Sheriff talks terrorism, national security at Modesto gathering
By Deke Farrow
Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson spoke at a gathering Thursday about his recent 10-day trip to Israel, during which he exchanged ideas and learned from its law enforcement, military and government leaders.
He told a Latino Community Roundtable luncheon audience that the Middle Eastern country places a higher importance on national security than on individual privacy. Israelis basically “live in a neighborhood surrounded by folks who want to kill them,” he said.
Americans debate a lot over privacy rights and enjoy freedoms that the people of Israel have been willing to give up, Christianson said.
“We’re more defensive of privacy than we are of security,” he said, “and that leaves us vulnerable to attack because there are people in the world who simply do not like the United States, they don’t like Western culture, they don’t like Americans, and frankly they believe very strongly that the only acceptable religion in the world is Muslim … and if you’re not that, you simply don’t belong here.”
Radical Islamic groups have made it to American shores despite all the efforts to keep them out, the sheriff said.
“We thought on 9/11 that this would never happen to us again, yet it’s real, it’s here and it’s a very credible threat,” he said.
As part of a nationwide group of U.S. law enforcement executives, including the police chiefs of New York City and Miami, Christianson arrived Nov. 15 in Tel Aviv, then traveled to Jerusalem. The trip was sponsored by an exchange program of the Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, he said, and cost taxpayers nothing.
During the trip, the U.S. delegation met with the chief inspector of the Israeli Police, which is largely made up of men and women formerly in the military Israel Defense Forces. The Americans got to participate in a deadly-force simulation, much as law enforcement conducts here, and observe a “full-blown, live-fire training scenario of a building taken over by terrorists.”
The sheriff made some comparisons about how law enforcement there and here conducts itself differently based on each society’s privacy expectations and protections. Israeli police demonstrated how they conduct a traffic stop of suspicious occupants.
“Felony stops for us, we’re on heightened alert. We get out, pull our guns, say ‘We want to see your hands’ and extract people from the car very safely,” Christianson said. “They just run up and pull everybody out of the car. If they think you’re a a threat, you’re just going to be pulled out of the car and held until they determine you’re not a threat.”
Highlighting a similarity, the sheriff said Israeli law enforcement deals with some of the same challenges as their U.S. counterparts. When they engage an armed suspect who is threatening to harm or kill others and have to use deadly force, they get criticized and second-guessed, he said.
“People say, ‘Why didn’t you just shoot the knife out of his hands?’ ” he said, “and the Palestinians get on the media and say, ‘They’re killing our children.’ ”
Christianson took a couple of questions after his talk and was asked if Israel allows open carrying of guns by citizens. The nation doesn’t allow open-carry but is issuing concealed-weapon permits, he said.
He added that he’s like-minded.
“My position is if you’re going to walk into a theater or supermarket or a school or a church with a gun that’s exposed, that’s just silly,” he said. “All you’re going to do is create fear and generate a lot of phone calls to the cops, and all the cops are going to come, and they’re going to point their guns at you because they don’t know if you’re a good or a bad guy and what your intent is.”
Christianson said he left the audience with the message that as a nation and a community, we need to better gather and share information and work together to protect America.
He said residents need to let law enforcement know about suspicious and unusual activities.
“Even if it turns out to be nothing, we want to know about it so that we have the ability to not only get information from the community but share information with the community,” he said. “We believe that will continue to bring not only a heightened state of awareness, but a greater level of security in hopefully eliminating potential threats.”