Athens, Ga. – Under the auspices of the University of Georgia Global Security Exchange program, two senior police officers from Tanzania visited the university this month for training in American law enforcement.
Tanzanian deputy police commissioners Rashid Hemedi and Mohamed Chico, the second- and third-ranking law enforcement officers in that country, collaborated with police officers from around the state of Georgia.
Sponsored by the Office of International Education and the African Studies Institute at UGA, the two officers met with their counterparts at the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the UGA Police Department. In addition to seeing the bomb squads of UGA and Athens-Clarke County, they were briefed on counterterrorism efforts in the state and spent a day at the Georgia Public Safety Center in Forsyth; an eye-opening visit to the Clarke County Jail concluded their training.
The police of Tanzania provide 24/7 security for UGA’s study abroad program in Tanzania. Thus they were also briefed on the issues surrounding law enforcement in an academic community.
This coming academic year, two police officers from UGA will make a visit to Dar-es-Salaam to learn about terrorism and law enforcement in East Africa – a region in which two American embassies were attacked in recent years.
Mark Lusk, associate provost for international affairs at UGA and the visitors’ cohost, noted that “international cooperation around global security issues has become an imperative in the aftermath of 9/11. This is a step toward mutual understanding as the law enforcement community meets new challenges.”