Portland Police Department

Portland, Oregon, United States

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In 2002, just months after 9/11, American police officers held their first official training expedition to Israel to learn about “counter-terrorism.” Since then, hundreds of law enforcement officials and government agents from across the country have been sent to Israel to meet with military and police forces, and thousands more have participated in conferences, trainings, and workshops with Israeli officials in the United States.

The American and Israeli governments justify these exchanges on the grounds that the United States and Israel share the mission of the War on Terror. American facilitators and participants of these programs similarly argue that the United States and Israel are allied democracies whose law enforcement agencies play a crucial role in preserving national security.

While framed as an opportunity for US law enforcement to learn policing strategies from a closely aligned democracy with counter-terror experience, in fact these are trainings with an occupying force that rules a population deprived of human and civil rights. Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods of state violence and control, including mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent.

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The Police Department of Portland, Oregon, is among the departments that have sent delegates to Israel. Mark Kroeker served as Chief of Portland Police Department between 1999 and 2003. Chief Mark Kroeker attended a training in Israel titled “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.” Kroeker resigned in 2003 amid pressure from various parties regarding his handling of protests, an officer-involved shooting, a report of police shootings, and a recording found from years before in which he said homosexuality should be outlawed.

Since leaving the Portland Police Department, he has held various executive policing, intelligence, and crisis management positions for the United Nations and the Walt Disney Company. In 2015, he founded Kroeker Partners LLC, which offers global “justice” and security services, and as of 2018 he is the Senior Partner.

As a staff member of the Peace Operations Training Institute he has international law enforcement experience, training police forces around the world as part of his work in the United Nations, and participating in an “American-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Group.”
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