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

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

John Nikita, a 33-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, shares his experiences in three different United Nations peacekeeping operations: Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.  Nikita discusses the challenges of recruitment and vetting, particularly in countries that are under the administration of the United Nations and have ceased to have a functioning military.  His experiences with donor relations, between individual donor states and the U.N., offers insight into the coordination of efforts required for police reform.  He reflects on the predeployment training policies of the Canadian government, as compared with the U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and on the changing nature of the "traditional" peacekeeping operation.  Nikita stresses the importance of the preparedness, cultural sensitivity and suitability of the U.N. and donor state police advisors on the ground in addition to the quality of the recruits for the national police. 

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

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

Robert Perito, a senior program officer with the United States Institute of Peace, recounts his experiences in international police recruitment and training initiatives, including in Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia and Timor-Leste.  He notes that while effective vetting in the post-conflict context is difficult, it is critical that there be systems to determine who can get into the police. Vetting should be seen as an ongoing process. He notes that in most cases police should be recruited as individuals rather than as entities, and he cautions that security problems are generally not solved simply by integrating militia or illegally armed groups into the official security force. Perito goes on to discuss lessons learned from police training programs in Kosovo and Haiti. This includes the need to adapt training programs to the local context, needs, and skill capacity, in addition to the importance of integrating field-based training with in-class basic skills training. He states that it is imperative to build the capacity of the government structures tasked with effectively managing, supporting and administering the new police force. Training new recruits in mass, he argues, is not effective if the body that governs them is corrupt and lacks necessary capacity. Finally, he notes that while community policing can have a role in police reform, it should not necessarily come at the expense of critical police training. 

Case Studies:  Building the Police Service in a Security Vacuum: International Efforts in Kosovo, 1999-2011 and Building Civilian Police Capacity: Post-Conflict Liberia, 2003-2011