Pedro Baltazar González discusses two aspects related to the activities of the National Academy of Public Security: recruitment strategies, and training and modernization of the police force.  Underscoring the academy’s commitment to recruitment of young people with a vocation for public service—regardless of their initial skills—he describes a successful internal recruitment strategy based on referrals by current officers.  He identifies another media-aware recruitment strategy aimed at young people from eastern El Salvador, who are underrepresented among recruits due to the influence of relatives living abroad. The importance of this strategy is due to the negative impact of relocation of other academy graduates to the east in the absence of any personal ties to the region.  González then discusses a number of initiatives undertaken to modernize the curriculum at the academy, emphasizing a shift from theoretical instruction to practical work. Training addresses other changes in society, such as gender sensitivity issues and new judicial developments to keep up with changing demands from the populace.

Mustafa Resat Tekinbas speaks about his role with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Police.  As a deputy police commissioner, he discusses his experience both in working with U.N. international policing and with the administrative intricacies of the Kosovo mission.  He begins by detailing the structure of the UNMIK police and explaining the progress the mission had made in the eight years since the inception of the force.  Tekinbas talks about the U.N. policies behind international police assignments, the limitations of pre-deployment training and aspects of the immersive training that takes place in the field.  He details efforts to deploy international police in certain areas to maximize their effectiveness.  He concludes with an example of the grueling work schedule of an international policeman and offers ideas for improvement.  

Case Study: Building the Police Service in a Security Vacuum: International Efforts in Kosovo, 1999-2011

Kabiru Ibrahim discusses the nature of the relationship between the Sierra Leonean Police and the United Nations Police, and the policing reforms that they were jointly pursuing.  Most of the reforms involve a high degree of training and capacity building.  The best and most cost-effective training method for a country like Sierra Leone, Ibrahim asserts, is to provide training for a small number of officers and equip them with the skills to train the rest of the Sierra Leonean Police.  As the U.N. Police elections adviser in the country, he identifies the major challenges that reformers face, including limited resources, weak discipline within the Sierra Leonean Police, and the division and distrust that exists between the unarmed general duty police and the armed operational support division.  Ibrahim also discusses issues surrounding investigation and crime management, specifically the tendency of police officers to bring a large number of cases to trial, but failing to follow through on the cases.  He concludes by maintaining that the reform efforts were succeeding slowly and that more resources would have increased effectiveness.

Robin Campbell relates his experience in working for police reform in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other countries.  He covers topics including recruitment and vetting, as well as the challenges of integrating and amalgamating different security forces with varying histories and organizational cultures into a new civilian police force.  He also covers the role of nonstate security actors in developing countries and reflects on the difficulty of forging and managing a productive relationship between these groups and the official police force.  He illuminates his experience in the developing world with reflections on the transformation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary into today's Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Case Study:  Cooling Ethnic Conflict Over a Heated Election: Guyana, 2001-2006

Shantnu Chandrawat, acting commander of UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) police in the Mitrovica region, discusses the progress of efforts to create an effective indigenous police force in Kosovo. Chandrawat, who had also served with an earlier UNMIK mission in Kosovo in 2001-2002, explains that during that first mission much of the crime he saw “related to the ethnic threat.” Now, those crimes have decreased, and crimes related to narcotics, smuggling, theft, and personal violence have increased. The police force itself has also changed substantially. At the time of Chandrawat’s first mission, UNMIK police carried out all policing duties; the local police forces were “under training and under probation.” Since that time, the KPS (Kosovo Police Service) has hired new officers of diverse ethnicities, integrated them effectively into the force, and implemented new training procedures involving both academy study and field unit rotations designed to develop specialized skills in such areas as field investigations, patrolling, forensics, and community policing. Chandrawat advises that these changes have been very productive, and that the KPS now functions effectively as an independent force with monitoring and oversight by UNMIK. He identifies the main challenges now facing the KPS as a lack of physical resources, especially vehicles; the need to improve transparency of the promotion system, and the need to increase salaries and improve salary payment practices.    

Case Study: Building the Police Service in a Security Vacuum: International Efforts in Kosovo, 1999-2011

Chirashree Das Gupta of the Asian Development Research Institute addresses a range of governance issues on the reform agenda of the Nitish Kumar government that came to power in India's Bihar state in 2005.  In particular, she talks about the administrative reforms that were necessary after years of curtailed expenditures and reduced functioning of basic governance.  She details the importance of coalition-building and incentive-based ownership of programs by the bureaucracy, while recognizing the issue of brokerage that exists in areas of deprivation with a limited number of positions available.  She highlights the recruitment of 100,000 teachers as both a success and a failure.  She also shares thoughts on integration of different segments of society in a place where the caste system so clearly divides political support.

Case Studies:  Coalition Building in a Divided Society: Bihar State, India, 2005-2009 and Reviving the Administration, Bihar State, India, 2005-2009

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.”    

Retired British police officer Keith Biddle recounts lessons learned from working on police reform programs in diverse contexts, including in Sierra Leone, where he headed the police force from 1999 to 2004, and in Somalia, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Biddle discusses the challenges of effective information gathering in police force vetting and recruitment. He emphasizes that recruitment is a community- and school-based process that should not be rushed. He goes on to discuss his experience in Sierra Leone in determining whether to recruit rebels into the police force and describes the types of challenges countries have faced in building more professional and meritocratic police forces. Next, Biddle discusses the importance of effective organizational structures to lead the police and cautions that efforts to recruit new talent may be futile to the extent that new officers enter a corrupt structure with the “wrong ethos.” Training programs, he states, should be developed in-house, with regard to context and existing skills, knowledge, and staff capacity, and include topics such as human rights, anti-corruption, and enforcement standards. Effectively combating corruption, Biddle posits, requires making the police vocation “valuable” in terms of reputation and fringe benefits. Ultimately, Biddle notes, police reform is “part of good governance” and must receive support from the highest levels of government. While police reform may be costly, he concludes, post-conflict countries cannot be expected to more forward without sustainable and effective police forces.    

Case Study:  Building Strategic Capacity in the Police: Sierra Leone, 1998-2008