 Hello, my name is Tim Paradis. I'm the host of an occasional interview series at the Portland Media Center on topics of political and social interest to mainers. I'll be talking today to Larry Gilbert, who is a former mayor and police chief of the city of Lewiston. Also has a long time and passionate interest in the Palestinian people. This interview is a follow-up to a conversation I had recently with Bob Scheibel, the chair of Main Voices for Palestinian Rights, in which we focused on the police training exchange between Israel and the United States. So we'll be combining a number of topics here. Larry, could you start by telling me how you became police chief, the evolution of your career briefly, and your interest in the Palestinian people? Well I started in 1969 and as a patrol officer, I worked my way up through the ranks to chief of police. Then I was the U.S. Marshal for the district of Maine for eight years, five years of the Maine Community Policing Institute, and then five years as mayor of Lewiston. I became, I guess, interested in the plight of the Palestinian people. We now winter in Florida, and in Florida I belong to an organization called World Beyond War, and I'm a Vietnam veteran, so I am also a member of Veterans for Peace. The lady in World Beyond War had an interest in the Palestinian issue, and I consider myself a people person, and I could see the plight of the Palestinian people, so I met with her and got more information and then became more involved in the issue and doing a lot of research and so on to see what is really happening there that we don't see here through the corporate media here in the United States. And how do you stay informed about issues related to Israel and Palestine? Well, I subscribe to the times of Israel for one of them, and World Beyond War, and also Veterans for Peace, they've had members go to Palestine and see what is actually happening there where the Palestinians are oppressed in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. So they're caught there and are policed there by the government. So let's talk about your experiences as a police chief in Lewiston. Lewiston is a demographic lane, has increasingly become a culturally and racially diverse city. When you were a police chief, were there issues in community relations and the type of policing that you inherited that you needed to address? Can you speak to that? Well, no, actually, I brought community-oriented policing to Maine in 1990 when I was police chief and we trained, it's a philosophy, not a program, and we trained all of our officers in the CERA problem-solving model, scanning analysis, response and analysis. So and we trained all of our officers in that. We placed our officers on bicycles. We were the first department in Maine to have bicycles. And we had a lawyer, I mean, a landlord on the street with the highest number of calls for service and gave us an apartment to have our officers work out of there, right there in the community. So we were able to reduce our crime rate and so it's a department of service to people. That's what I wanted as a police chief. And obviously with the protests nationwide following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the perception among the public and the reality, I think, of most cities is that model of policing is not the norm. Can you speak to some of the issues that you perceive about policing in the U.S.? And I will also add, because we are trying to cover two topics here, the relation of the police to training from Israel, whether you have encountered that mindset and whether you've encountered that training exchange between Israel and the U.S. in your experience. But if you can speak to police culture in general. Yeah. Well, my encounter with it is not positive. You know, it's so militarized that even starting at a police academy where it is a paramilitary type of training where it's sort of like entering the basic training for the military. And you're talking about the basic training in U.S. here. And so where you have to bounce a quarter on a bed and you have to have inspection and you have to, you can't talk during the meals and all of that. I went to the police academy in 1970 and it was nine to five, it was a college type atmosphere. And I think I turned out all right. So I think that training for police should be like we want them to be professionals. How do we train other professionals? You can still do all of the force type things, but treat them like you would a professional in any other profession. So I think it starts there and I think it starts even before that. It starts with recruiting, how you recruit. You can recruit for the spirit of adventure and that really attracts people or in the spirit of service. But if you recruit in the spirit of adventure, you're going to get that. It's much more difficult to train that person to be of service versus one of service to learn all of the use of guns, use of force and all of that stuff. So because you're a service organization, you're there to serve people. When we talk about protect and serve, serve is a key word there. So now to look at training for police, U.S. police in Israel and Israeli police training our officers here, Israeli police there are in occupying force, keeping people oppressed and use of force against them, imprisonment, torture. Is that what we want here? And we spend $7,000 an hour to the military, to the Israeli government. And so of our dollars, our tax dollars, U.S. government funding that goes to Israel. And so the problem here I see is that the corporate media doesn't show that side of the issue between the Israeli and Palestinians. When you say that side, you mean it's focused on Israeli security and Israeli needs and never the Palestinians. And the Palestinians are being made to be terrorists and are treated as such when they are not. The Palestinian people are just ordinary family people who want to live as they used to live before it was created as a state of Israel. So that's all they want is just to be able to live like we do here, raise your family and live in peace instead of in fear, constant fear, constant fear of the police. And so and I kind of see that happening here. And I don't like it, you know, we see our our police being more militarized with uniforms and, you know, you know, there's there's so much body armor and this and that it's a fear factor as well. And police shouldn't be there to put fear in people. They're there to serve. I can tell you that as someone who's been to dozens, if not hundreds of protests and demonstrations over the years. I look at the rows of police in their Kevlar vests and helmets. And I've always asked myself, are they here to protect my right as an American citizen to express dissent or to express free speech? Are they here to make sure that, you know, I don't step out of line or that that they enforce the will of the state? Now, in terms of the political and cultural determinants of what's been happening increasingly in the U.S., what do you think those those forces are? And how much chance do you do you give our society to change the model of policing that we currently have? Well, since it's an issue now, and it seems to be an ongoing issue. And it's it's it's been placed in the forefront. And so now as a result, people don't just want to, you know, they've heard reform reform and then it goes back to the same thing. I think now the issue is right there on the front burner and people are demanding change. And for example, here in Maine, Mike Soschuk, the former Portland police chief and public safety commissioner, I contacted him last week and he sent me some reports that the Police Academy Board of Trustees have gone through and has been signed off by the main chiefs of police association, the main sheriff's association and the main department of public safety. And they reviewed all of their policies. And so and they're going to do periodic reviews as well. And they've they've made some changes. And this has been since what we've seen here this year with the protests. So I'm glad to see that. And I think Mike Soschuk really cares greatly. I think he was a great police chief here in Portland. And so I'm glad to see him. That Governor Mills appointed him as the Commissioner of Public Safety. So I feel good about Maine. I don't feel so good about Florida. And can you speak to your perception of Florida or some of the sort of national trends? Well, national, the trend and the trend can happen here, too, because we get military equipment and some of it can be helpful, for example, to bring officers in an armored personnel carrier in a barricaded subject situation or whatever. But some of this equipment is just so huge and so on. And and so when you dress like that and you feel like that, well, well, who's the enemy? So, you know, I think we've got to draw back from that. So I think, for example, uniforms, I think we need to soften the image of police officers. Everything is sort of is paramilitary. We have military type uniforms. We have ranks, you know, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain. We don't have that with other other professions. And so we can call them supervisors or whatever. But in the uniform, I think soften the uniform. For example, when we had the bicycle patrol, I had officers in a certain bicycle uniform, which was nice. And it was softer polo shirts, slacks like this. I think softens the image and I think it becomes people become more officers are more approachable to the public. And I think we need that coming together. And those kinds of changes, it sounds like, would be made at the municipal police level or at the state level, perhaps, in terms of policies. And can you speak to national level changes that might need to be made? Because I know there is the issue of qualified, I think it's called qualified immunity, yeah, where the police are given pretty much the almost the doubt in any situation, because police face situations that the normal individual does not face, right? So, yeah, that's why there is the qualified immunity. Not every citizen goes, you know, faces these life life threatening situations. So but you see any national legislation that would make a difference? Or is it really a state and municipal? I think issue in general. I think I think the mindset of. Elected officials has to take place in terms of saying, we require that police be more approachable, be more of service, and we will support you in doing that. And so so I think that happens with elected officials at all levels of government. And and yeah, I think we we need to. When we hear that defund the police, I'm not for defund the police. I support Black Lives Matter, but I think that we have to. Just really change the mindset of service. Well, I can't speak to folks holding their defund the police signs in terms of their intention. But I think a lot of that is about channeling funding in different directions. It's not the total defunding of police departments. I don't think anyone's advocating that. No, and I'm not I don't think there is. But there's been that wide brush. That's right. OK, and not all police officers are like the officer who had his knee on the on George Floyd. But that's the type of training that you see in Israel. Right. So, you know, do we want that here in the US like the Israelis are treating the Palestinians and in terms of the cultural change or both policy, politics and cultural change that needs to take place? I saw a recent video that I think you've seen as well of police in Tampa. This is after the George Floyd murder with the neck on the police of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. Right. And that did happen in Tampa last week where the officer had his knee on the person's on a woman's neck. Right. OK. And and then the the the other people there are saying, hey, get off, get off her neck and just continued on. So let's segue a little more fully to Israel, Palestine. You talked about the mindset changes and the political changes that would need to take place to reform policing in the US. What do you think needs to change in US policies with respect to Israel that would eventually change the policing and the culture of policing as it affects Palestinians? Well, I think. I think it it requires. Good, faithful negotiation, equal negotiation when we, the United States, are supportive of with our dollars, with our tax dollars on the Israelis. And we say, oh, gee, it's a two states. The two parties need to negotiate. Well, we're not negotiating at an equal level here. So there's an imbalance. So I think we need to bring the balance and then have the negotiation. So what I would like to see is one government there represented by both sides like we have here. So you're talking about a future single democratic state, which has been floated as an option. Um, in my experience, the US politicians will constantly parrot the idea of the two sides sitting together and negotiating a two state solution. Now, you shake your head. Why? Well, because it's unfair. Number one, one one oppresses the other. So already it's unequal. So how do you balance there? But how do you balance that so that you do have good negotiations? So I think one of the one things we need to do is withdraw from the process and let the two parties negotiate evenly. And that doesn't happen, nor do they want it to happen. So, you know, so if you're oppressing people, why would you want to give up anything? You know, now from my reading of the general media just in the last week, we've seen more of sort of normalizing of relations with Israel by, in this case, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinians seem to be as ever an afterthought. Do you see any scenario where that's going to change over time? Well, you know, there was the United Arab Emirates. You know, the agreement was to stop annexing the West Bank, for example. Well, it's already annexed. So I mean, there are settlements developing every day there in the West Bank, where the Israelis are coming in, knocking down homes, destroying the crops of the Palestinians and then establishing settlements there. So they're moving people away and they just actually want them to go away from their own land. You know, how would we feel here in the United States if some if the government came over, bulldozed our house and said, you know, go on because we're going to put someone else in your house. And even in the same house they're putting people in. So it's just totally wrong and we're supporting that. And I find it strange that it's coming from Jewish people. And believe me, I have many, many good friends who are Jewish and and and many agree with me that, you know, what you've already gone through and why do this now? You know, when I was police chief, it was the Holocaust Survivor Month and I always brought in when I was mayor, I should say, brought in survivors of the Holocaust to come and speak at the library. So, you know, the Holocaust Museum in Augusta. I've been to the one in Washington. I I my one of my best friends when I was a little kid, my next door neighbor was Jewish. As a matter of fact, his older brother became the magistrate judge here in Portland, David Cohen. And when I was U.S. Marshall, it was my job to protect him, my next door neighbor. Well, if I can editorialize briefly, my own perception is that the issue in Israel, Palestine is far less about Jewish versus Muslim, Israeli versus Palestinian, then it is the powerful versus the powerless. Exactly. And you referred previously to the corporate media rarely reporting the reality. Why do you think that is? And do you see any sign that that's changing over time? I would ask anyone watching, when have you ever seen the Palestinian side represented in any news outlet and and you don't. And so there is another side to the story. And I think people here have to on their own look into it as I did. And when you do, you see what is really happening. You know, Palestinians are being referred to as terrorists and even with the training when U.S. police go there, they refer to the Palestinians as terrorists. So that's the belief that comes back here. As a matter of fact, the U.S. ambassador to Israel has said he likes it when U.S. police go there for training because they come back and they're pro Zionists. Well, you know, that just adds to the problem. So we need to get away from that. And we need a media that is more fair, that is more balanced, and we're not seeing that. Are you aware whether Israeli security forces, police, army have participated in training in Maine? No, I'm not aware of it in Maine, but I am aware of it in the United States. I do believe that the head of perhaps it was the police union did go to Israel and spoke highly. It was the former colonel of the main state police. I see who had gone there and was impressed with the training. And yeah, for certain things, OK, but I don't think the Israeli police were doing the service type of thing like serving all of its people, OK, instead of just some people. Yeah. Now, are you hopeful about the future of policing in the U.S. in terms of the types of reforms that you've been talking about? Or do you think we are going to kind of retrench back to always once it's very it's very difficult to break bad habits. And I say that because it was a chain smoker at one time. And but I haven't I haven't smoked in 40 years, but it was very difficult. So but I think the more attention is given to it, I think more pressure will bear on on the politicians to demand the changes. And so we just can't have lip service to this. It really needs to be addressed because we're getting away from it. And how we're getting away from it is the type of military type training that the police are receiving. And so, yeah, it's it's tough out there. I've been there. I've I've had my battles, you know, out on the street. You know, I've been knee down and in slush, you know, handcuffing someone. So I know what it is. But on the other hand, you can get so much more with sugar, right? So I think the human interaction between police and the people they serve has to happen. So that means coming together. That means getting out of your cruiser. That means getting out and talking to people, talking to kids. I had I had allowed our officers to use athletic type shoes with their uniforms so and have a basketball in the back of the cruiser and stop and shoot some baskets with the kids. You know, more of that has to happen. Yep. And and and have community meetings and and sit there because problems in a neighborhood, who knows the problems? It's the people and who knows what what will help solve it? The people and and so all they need is the police to help them in solving the problem. Now, we've only got a minute or less or two left. Yeah. To our viewers and the average citizen, what can they productively do in your view to have an impact on the direction of policing in the U.S. And for that matter, the direction of Israeli, Palestinian politics as it's influenced by the U.S. I was sitting out in the audience. What can I do? I'd say speak to your elected officials demand. You have a right to demand from them because they represent you demand from them these changes. I think I'm being signaled that we have one minute left. OK. Well, I've got notes here and we could certainly explore all sorts of other areas. But I'll just end by saying I really appreciate your coming here. I appreciate your experience and sharing it with our viewers. I never thought I'd be sitting across from a former police chief because my experience has often been viewing them at a remove as the problem or the enemy. And it's good to really hear your your direct experience and the perspective that you bring to this. And it's a very hopeful one. And there are a lot of police officers, very good police officers, caring police officers, you know. We're done. Thank you very much, Larry.