Iraqi Kurdish Officials Get a Look at Our Law Enforcement
Columbia, SC (WLTX) – To talk to members of law enforcement here in our state, most of them will tell you about how they’re all a family. This week, members of that extended family are here this week to learn from their brothers and sisters.
A group of police officers are here from Iraqi region of Kurdistan to learn a little about how we train our law enforcement.
You may remember Sheriff Leon Lott and a few members of his staff visited the Erbil College of Police in Kurdistan earlier this year, and the reciprocal visit has been an eye opening one so far. Previous Coverage: Leon Lott Goes to Iraq to Train Officers
We’re on day two of this trip and it has just been absolutely wonderful. They’re are so excited to be here, they have had a blast. I know they’re tired, but they don’t want to sleep,” says Capt. Roxanne Meetze with the Sheriff’s Department.
The trip allows our officials like Meetze to share ideas and experiences, and hear about others’ as well. “Every year, they approve about 20-30 females in the police academy,” Lt. Hataw Fouad Ahmed explains, through a translator, to female officers over lunch,”It’s the same training, but the female platoon is separated from the males. But it’s the same training, the same schedule, the same everything.”
Ahmed is the only woman officer teaching at the academy, but that’s not the only difference they saw here. “One of the lessons that’s the first time for us is the driving lessons, before we never have,” says Capt. Suhail Najmuldeen Ola, “We need to learn more about police job and police training, because before – in Saddam’s regime – police were doing the military’s jobs.”
A day full of lessons, for both the hosts and the guests. “We don’t feel that we are in another country, we really feel that we are among our friends and our family,” Ola says.
Adds Meetze, “That’s the brotherhood and sisterhood of law enforcement. We’re all family.”
The folks from Iraq will be here for the rest of the week, learning about how law enforcement works. They’ll then take that training back to their students
Tagged in: KRG, Kurdish police, U.S.-Kurdish cooperation
