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

Benjamin Cestoni describes the recruitment procedures employed by El Salvador's National Academy for Public Security.  Every three months, the process begins with a national recruitment announcement, a sequence of five qualifying exams that apply appropriate standards for both male and female potential cadets, personal interviews, and a vetting process that involves background checks within the recruits’ communities.  Cestoni identifies the financial burden associated with foregoing salaried employment while at the academy as a challenge for both recruitment and completion of training.  The effectiveness of each recruitment round depends on the agricultural seasons, and there is a high drop-out rate due to cadets finding paid employment.  The main incentive to join the academy is the prospect of long-term job stability, but Cestoni says the promotion system must be improved.  He underscores the success of recruitment of women, whose enrollment increased from 4% to 7%.  He identifies areas of present and potential coordination with the National Civil Police.  First, a recent curricular shift at the academy favors hands-on, skill-intensive training over theoretical instruction, which necessitates the cooperation of the police.  Second, there is constant feedback between the two institutions, so that training workshops are developed in response to the needs of acting officers.  This process resulted in great improvement in the area of investigations.  Nonetheless, Cestoni points to a need for coordinated follow-up on students after graduation, to consolidate assessment of each officer’s career progress.  Cestoni attributes academy modernization to the support offered by the international community, especially from Spain, France and the United States.  His most important suggestion for cost-efficient cooperation is for donors to emphasize deployment of trainers to the host country over inviting trainees to donor countries.

Oliver Janser describes how the international community concentrated heavily on building a police service in Kosovo and on training police at the Vushtrri training facility. He gives a detailed description of the training curriculum, including the conflicts between U.S. and European Union norms. In addition to the complex political situation, he cites problems involving the public’s lack of trust in the police force, with the recruitment/appointment process of Kosovo Police Service officers, and with the lack of an initial exit strategy. He expresses concerns about the transition between the United Nations Interim Administration Mission and the EU's Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, and explains some of the differences between the international organizations present there.

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

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