At the time of this interview, Jim Tillman worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a program manager for the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program. He began his career as a plant manager for the American textile firm Brown Group, after which he became a police officer in the U.S. His first international policing experience was in Haiti, where he worked on police reform and development. He later worked in Azerbaijan, Ukraine and throughout the Balkans.  

At the time of this interview, Joseph Kekula was the former inspector-general of the Liberian National Police. He specialized in VIP protection and worked in the presidential mansion. He came up through the ranks to become a colonel. During the transitional government from 2003 to 2005, Kekula served as a deputy director for police administration. 

At the time of this interview, Knut Walter was president of the Accreditation Commission of El Salvador.  He earned a doctorate in history and held academic posts at Jose Simeon Cañas Central American University for 23 years.  He was a fellow at the New York Social Science Research Council, and he served as director of graduate programs at the Latin American University of Social Sciences in Guatemala.

At the time of this interview, Anthony Howlett-Bolton was a strategic justice and security sector adviser, having retired four years earlier as a deputy chief constable for a police force in the United Kingdom.  He worked with the Lesotho Mounted Police, the (Lesotho) National Police Information Agency, Ministry of Home Affairs and Public Safety, and the British Council in Lesotho.  In 2007 Howlett-Bolton began work in Sierra Leone as an adviser to a development program, working with the police, prisons and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Gareth Newham studied organizational psychology and political studies at the University of Cape Town. He completed a post-graduate degree in political studies and wrote his honors dissertation on civil-military relations and how South Africa could ensure democratic control of the military. In 2002, he received a master’s degree from the Graduate School for Public and Development Management at Wits University. His master’s dissertation looked at how to promote police integrity at Hillbrow Police Station, a corrupt inner-city station. Newham previously worked for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) where he led the Provincial Parliamentary Monitoring Project and conducted research on provincial legislatures. He later served as project manager for the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) where he focused on police management issues and crime prevention. In March 2006, Newham became the policy and strategy adviser to the Gauteng MEC (Member of the Executive Cabinet) for Community Safety, a post he continued to hold at the time of this interview.       

At the time of this interview, Chief Superintendent Dave Beer was serving as the director general of international policing for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a position that included peace-operations deployments, liaison with INTERPOL, and oversight of the international operations branch, the visits and travel branch, and the international affairs and policy branch.  Beer led or participated in policing development missions under the auspices of the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the U.S. State Department.  Although he spent the most time in Haiti, partially due to his being bilingual in French and English, he also served in Liberia, Central African Republic and Iraq.   

Doug Coates began his involvement in international policing in 1993 as a member of the United Nations advance team to the U.N. Mission to Haiti.  He then served as a regional commander in Haiti’s Grand'Anse region, where he was responsible for the development of policing services, training of the (at that time) interim security force, and maintenance of law and order throughout the region.  From 1996 to 2001, Coates managed the peacekeeping department of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including the management of a mission in Haiti and the deployment of Canadian police to peacekeeping operations around the world.  He then served as the director of police programs and as chief operating officer to the Pearson Peacekeeping Center, a private, nongovernmental organization based in Ottawa; in that capacity, he was involved in the development and implementation of military police and civilian programming.  At the time of the interview, Coates served as the director of the RCMP’s International Peace Operations program.  His international experience in international policing included Haiti, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; he also worked on police capacity-building programs in Africa.  Coates died in the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where he was serving as the acting police commissioner for the U.N. Stabilization Mission.

At the time of this interview, Rachel Neild was senior adviser on ethnic profiling and police reform with the Equality and Citizenship Program of the Open Society Justice Initiative. She previously worked with the Washington Office on Latin America, where she was involved in monitoring the Salvadoran peace accords and demilitarization policy in Haiti. She also worked with the Andean Commission of Jurists, Peru, and the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, Costa Rica. Neild has done consultancies on human rights and policing for the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Rights and Democracy, among other organizations.