Batu Kutelia
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.
Jonathan (Yoni) Friedman drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Monrovia, Liberia, during June and July 2011, and on the basis of interviews conducted by Arthur Boutellis in Monrovia in May 2008 and text prepared by Christine MacAulay. Case published September 2011. A separate case study, “Building an Inclusive, Responsive National Police Service: Gender-Sensitive Reform in Liberia, 2005-2011” describes efforts to increase gender diversity and respond to high rates of sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia.
Associated Interview(s): Bruce Baker, Ibrahim Idris, Joseph Kekula, Mark Kroeker, Robert Perito, Paavani Reddy, Aaron Weah, Peter F. Zaizay
Chief Superintendent Dave Beer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recounts his experiences in leading policing/justice development missions, particularly in Haiti, in the early 1990s and then about a decade later. His length of service in the arena of international peacekeeping and the parameters under which he has served, both as a representative of the Canadian government during a bilateral mission and under the aegis of the United Nations during a multilateral mission through the Department of Peacekeeping Operation, carries with it a broad viewpoint as to the development of policing in Haiti. His experience in other states, particularly Iraq and Liberia, provides a comparative study of best practices. He particularly offers insight into pre-deployment training by the U.N. and the Canadian government and on-the-ground knowledge of local recruitment strategies and requirements. The sentiments of this quote reverberate throughout the interview, "It is an axiom, I think, of this world of international development that you have to find local solutions led by local individuals supported by the local government for it to be either a) instituted; b) successful; and c) sustainable. You’re not going to have any one of those three unless it’s a locally-created program."
Case Study: Building an Inclusive, Responsive National Police Service: Gender-Sensitive Reform in Liberia, 2005-2011
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, the director of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police International Peace Operations program, recounts his experiences and lessons learned in building effective international and indigenous policing capacity. Drawing on his experiences in Haiti from 1993 to 1995, where he served as a regional commander with the United Nations Mission to Haiti, Coates describes the challenges associated with the effective vetting, recruitment, and training of police services. He notes that training and professionalizing local and national police forces, particularly in a country without a strong foundation in formal policing, necessitates taking into account the local context and community needs. Coates also discusses the current efforts of the RCMP to develop a more rigorous predeployment international police-training program. He stresses that support for police participation in international peace operations requires recognition of the fundamental linkages between domestic and international security concerns. He argues that the international community “has to invest and invest for the long term” to strengthen police services to deal “with the challenges associated to maintaining law and order in the 21st century.”
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.
Rachel Neild describes police reform programs in Haiti, El Salvador and other parts of the world. She discusses extensively the challenges of effective recruitment and vetting, particularly in the presence of poor information. She goes on to discuss the process of integrating former combatants into police forces, noting that while starting police reform from scratch may have been necessary in Haiti, this need not be the case in other contexts if former forces are properly vetted and held to the same standards and qualifications as the rest of the police force. Neild goes on to discuss some of the challenges associated with the effective operationalization of the police force, including force composition, professionalization and community involvement. She concludes that policing is a “two-way street” that involves both developing and building trust of the police and ensuring that people “understand the nature of law and rights and responsibilities.”
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.
Johan Burger talks about crime and policing in South Africa. To fight crime, he contends that the focus should be on its root causes, including, socioeconomic conditions, and the criminal justice system. He advocates the adoption of an integrated strategy that involves governmental and non-governmental departments to address these conditions and political factors. Burger discusses the National Crime Prevention Strategy that was adopted in 1996. The strategy failed due to lack of a shared understanding of crime and policing among politicians, lack of funding, a disregard for socioeconomic conditions, and the inability of police to deliver immediate and visible results on crime prevention. He also describes the various operations under the Community Safety Plan and the National Crime Combating Strategy, which focused on serious and violent crimes, organized crime, crimes against women and children, and improving service delivery. Burger recounts his experience working on the change-management team, which dealt with reforming the police. He talks about police demilitarization and rank restructuring. He describes the confusion and the decline in police morale and discipline that emerged as a result. Burger also challenges community policing. While he acknowledges instances of success, he argues that it is idealistic in terms of its expectations on how the police, in partnership with communities, can fight crime. He identifies sector policing as being more practical and tangible. Though it is still a joint effort between the police and the community, the police resolve only what they can and refer what they are unable to deal with to other government institutions.
At the time of this interview, Johan Burger was a senior lecturer in the Crime and Justice Programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. Before that, he was a lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology in the department of Safety and Security Management. Burger joined the police service in 1968 and retired in 2004 as an assistant commissioner. Within the police force, he worked as a station commissioner and investigating officer. He was involved in policy and strategy development. Burger became a member of the change-management team that was created in 1993 as South Africa moved toward a new democracy. He later headed Strategy and Policy Development for the South African police service.
At the time of this interview, Carlos Humberto Vargas García was the chief of studies at the National Academy of Public Security in El Salvador, an institution separate from the national police. From 1992 to 1995, he was the first sub-director of the academy, and he trained in the U.S. and Central America with ICITAP, the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program. He also worked in the private sector, in other universities in El Salvador as a professor of engineering, and for the Instituto Salvadoreño de Formación Profesional, which is in charge of non-formal education.
At the time of this interview, José Hugo Granadino Mejía was chief of the professional training unit of the National Police of El Salvador. A lawyer and notary, he in 1993 became one of the first professors at the National Academy of Public Security (Academia Nacional de Seguridad Pública), an institution separate from the National Police. He also served as director of study and later as director general of the academy, and he worked as a professor of law at the Universidad de El Salvador for 25 years and at the Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador.
At the time of this interview, José Humberto Posada Sánchez was the legal adviser to the Office of General Management of the National Police of El Salvador (Policía Nacional Civil). This post involved providing legal counsel, writing legislation and implementing national legislation into the internal policy of the national police. He previously served as a member of Congress, ambassador to Guatemala, member of the Central American Parliament and adviser to the vice minister of citizen security after the Sub-Department for Citizen Security was created in 2002. He also worked on the Ley Orgánica de la Polícia Nacional Civil of 2002, national legislation that sought to strengthen the police force.