An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Policing Interview no.: A7 Interviewee: Kurt Eyre Interviewer: Gordon Peake Date of Interview: 4 December 2007 Location: Cranfield United Kingdom Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties PEAKE: Good afternoon, it's the 4th of December, 2007, and I'm with Kurt Eyre, the Head of the International Academy, NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency) in the United Kingdom. Before I begin the interview, Kurt, I just want to confirm that you have had the opportunity to read and that you have signed the release forms in connection to the project. EYRE: Yes, I have both read and signed the various documents. PEAKE: Thank you. Then with your permission I'll begin the interview now. EYRE: Sure. PEAKE: I'd like to begin first of all by asking you what your job entails as Head of the International Academy of the National Policing Improvement Agency, and maybe talk a little bit about your career journey and how you came from starting off to where you are now. EYRE: No problem, Gordon. As Head of the International Academy at Bramshill, a good starting point was my role in assisting with the recent merger of my former organization, Centrex [Central Police Training and Development Authority), into the new National Policing Improvement Agency in April 2007. The role of the international academy in the new agency was to continue to provide UK-based policing leadership programs for senior police officers at the operational and executive levels, as well as to expand our strategic training and development partnerships internationally in order to support regional capacity-building and improve professional and citizen-focused policing internationally. A significant part of our work is around the personal development of high-potential police officers in all types of policing roles, to raise the profile of policing, in particular in the rule of law, something which has been missing in the security and development arena over the past decade or so. Our two signature programs are the International Commanders' Program, for inspector and superintendent-level ranks, and the International Strategic Leadership Program, aimed at those officers moving up to the executive level and chief officer ranks. These programs are run within the leadership unit. The other section of the academy consists of the advisory unit, comprising five international policing advisors, representing the five regions of the world: Asia- Pacific, including China; Europe; Middle East-North Africa; Africa; and also Latin America-Caribbean. It was this latter post that I was appointed to back in 2003. It is this unit that provides an integrated operational training and development advisory service, in support of our colleagues overseas and usually linked to UK government international projects. Key to this role-and something I became very aware of early on-was the importance of respecting the local context in order to reassure and gain trust amongst our fellow police officers and staff. Much of my work in training co-ordination revolved around the development of community policing, public order or critical incident command training projects, improvements in criminal investigation techniques, as well as scenes of crime, forensics, and intelligence programs. Interestingly, these past few years, I was increasingly being asked to assist with the generic HR [human resources] and organizational change projects as part of local capacity-building initiatives. In summary, I did my time as a training coordinator first, before moving fairly quickly into a more operational role within the academy, before finally being appointed to head of the academy in 2007. PEAKE: Thank you. How did you come to be in this position? What was your career trajectory? What were some of the skills that you brought to the position that you're in currently? EYRE: To be honest having been born in Zimbabwe and starting to travel from a very early age, with my grandparents and father having lived in the Caribbean and East Africa for many years, plus having served for several years in the Royal Marines, you could say that I've always been an international child. However it was during my commission within the armed forces that I first developed not only key operational and command abilities, but most importantly good people and project management skills. In particular, it was my final command in charge of the prestigious Junior Command Course that saw me get specifically involved in leadership and development training, a role I took to very quickly and enjoyed thoroughly. I had always intended to only complete a short career commission, as I had always wanted to test myself in the commercial sector with my original intention being to return to South Africa. As it transpired, an opportunity arose with a prominent UK business school, Ashridge, where I was able to move into client relationship, organizational consultancy, leadership and personal development. This I did for several years, learning a significant amount, particularly in the area of consultancy and business development, but eventually realized that whilst I enjoyed the challenge and success of working within this environment, something was missing-that something being, I think, that my values and approach were probably better suited to work as a public servant within the public sector. Consequently, having previously considered policing after I left the forces, I now found myself applying for a training role with the international faculty at Bramshill, which I knew to be a world-renowned Police Staff College. PEAKE: Thank you. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about context, about how you become aware of the context which you work in. By that, I mean the context in which you work overseas, but also the context of the UK government's various arms and agencies that are involved in policing. So to begin with first by talking about the context in which you work overseas. You mentioned some of the areas in which you coordinate the training advisors-Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East-North Africa, Africa, and Latin America: extremely large, extremely complex, and extremely diverse regions. How do you as an individual come to get situational awareness of the specific context in which you're working in order to inform and shape the training programs you develop? EYRE: Again I think a useful starting point is to set the scene around how I saw UK police training being delivered internationally. Much of what I came across was based around training and development programs for policing in the UK being pulled off the shelf and forced into local projects on a very short-term basis with the key assumption being, if it's a UK policing program, then it must be right. However, it must be understood that much of this was related to our Commonwealth roots and the fact that for many years we had been supporting and supplying policing to many of these countries. It had been very much a UK export, loosely aligned to UK government foreign policy and increasingly (and worryingly) commercially driven. In terms of leadership, this was indeed more straightforward in that many of the high potentials and future leaders of Commonwealth police forces did come to Bramshill to receive their executive development. It was their request for further assistance on completion of their own development that in many ways started it all off for the international faculty. Fundamental to my awareness of what was happening developmentally, was that there were no formal training processes and that it was very much based on the reputation of Bramshill, strong personal relationships and informal networks of policing contacts based within government and policing, home and abroad. Both at Bramshill and within UK policing, an alumnus of sorts existed but again, none of this was formalized. Europe, the Caribbean and Africa tended to be the focus, and apart from those officers selected to come to the UK, the coordination and effectiveness of policing projects delivered overseas remained dubious. One of the important consequences of this, here at home, was that international policing was regarded as a sideshow, a distraction that carried very little favor with chief officers or police associations when asked to contribute. Furthermore, in many instances officers volunteering to deploy overseas either on, or indeed in support of, UK government Peace Support Operations, would be told from the outset by the force that it would be detrimental to their promotional prospects! This gives some idea of the challenge that faced us at the academy as we started off on the road towards a more professional, coherent, and effective training and development strategy. I did mention previously this issue of income generation. It cannot be underestimated, the impact this has had in attracting significant numbers of individuals and commercial organizations into the police training and development arena. In a nutshell, policing and rule of law is understood by many outside of policing to be a lucrative business, one which is expanding rapidly, be that within the stabilization or peace support environment or more generally within development globally. From major consultancies, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Global Risks, to individual officers, either recently retired or who have been out of the business for several years, all now look at this area of policing activity as a business opportunity. From a personal perspective, I have significant reservations about this from an ethical and professional standpoint. PEAKE: This is within the individual police organizations? EYRE: There is no doubt that with the impact of globalization, policing and rule of law is going to play a more prominent role in global security. Consequently, whilst UK policing attempts to get its house in order, this significant increase in commercial interest in the sector will in the short term only exacerbate the situation as both individuals or companies externally attempt to establish their own relationships with any one of the 43 home department police forces. With no central coordination or management, with the FCO still tending to work direct through the Metropolitan Police Service [Met]-or, as they tend to be known overseas, New Scotland Yard-the picture remains confused and uncoordinated. So yes, this tends to encapsulate the current situation. That said, recently the Met has become very aware of its own failings in this regard, i.e. that it is finding significant resources being committed to overseas work, without any direct linkage to its own "Safer London" priorities or an understanding of why it is even doing some of this work. With our own national security strategy having only recently been developed, with CT [counter-terrorism] dominating much of our engagement with overseas forces, you can quickly tell why establishing a more integrated international policing strategy is of such importance to us here. PEAKE: So how did you attempt to coordinate and cohere what you characterized as being a very uncoordinated and incoherent form of policing assistance? EYRE: Personally, I realized very quickly on opening my drawer that there were no formal procedures or processes written down in any format that I could recognize. Even within our own faculty, much of what we were doing was individually initiated and based on experiences and stories. At that point I started to research what principal training and development strategies were in fact being run for our national police training projects, to see to what extent these could be tailored for our international work. I do believe that my previous operational background was instrumental in helping guide me through this period, in helping develop my own approach to project management, duty of care, and client relationship responsibilities as a police training coordinator. Another key realization at this time was that any project we were looking to develop overseas in support of Her Majesty's Government [HMG] must in some way relate back to our own domestic policing priorities. There had to be some correlation, however indirect, that could justify our activity in the context of the national policing plan and benefit to the UK taxpayer. We needed to be much smarter in identifying the linkages, and aligning UK foreign policy to our local communities. It became clear to me that the focus needed to be on professionalizing our training and development approach, communicating more effectively with UK policing, and understanding more clearly what the various HMG international priorities were in order to provide a more accurate response. This is where I believe a second important moment arrived for me, and that was my getting involved in the new government cross-departmental initiative called Security Sector Reform [SSR]. PEAKE: So you identified fairly quickly that there was a problem with the manner in which UK policing assistance was organized. In what practical ways did you go from achieving that realization, which if I've got my timeline correct was somewhere around 2003, 2004? EYRE: Yes. PEAKE: To 2007. What changes have you worked your way through? What processes have you engaged In? EYRE: I started developing my own learning, training and development analysis procedures, based on our national curriculum design principles developed at the national training centre up in Harrogate. We developed a number of core systems and procedures with regard to the learning environment, in particular an approach to personal development known as action-centered learning. Consequently I was able to develop learning needs analyses, tools and techniques that were much more impactive locally and a lot less didactic, or "dump from the front" style training delivery as we commonly referred to it. It was from this point that we developed our own internal training SOPs [standard operating procedures] too. From these SOPs, we were able to more accurately tailor our training interventions to the local context. From a personal perspective, armed with my former operational background and now more confident in the latest national training designs, I was able to effect a more professional training support approach to my desk responsibilities in Latin American and the Caribbean. It was also important to share much of my own research and thinking with other members of the faculty, including my Head of Faculty, to cross-reference with their experiences in order to develop a more professional and consistent team approach. This was also important for us in improving our own ad-hoc, informal and inconsistent approach within the faculty. I had to be patient. It was only after a year or so managing some of the current contracts and engagements that I felt I had the opportunity to start to apply a more challenging approach to the development of training projects in the region. In a nutshell, I moved from a position of simply saying "Yes" to any request to one where we quickly asked for clarification of the long-term objectives, including issues of ownership, legitimacy (what part of the policing improvement strategy was this intervention meant to support), and to what extent had they considered the human resource and capacity-building requirements of the program. Local ownership along with reassurances of a genuine partnership approach-rather than a UK-centric "We know best, and here's something off the shelf" approach-played a significant role in achieving trust between us. It was interesting to see the response I got. In Jamaica, for example, where I was testing this approach with the head of the Jamaican Staff College, Senior Superintendent Dormah Harrison's reaction was almost instantaneous. With his own clear vision, he went to great lengths to explain how he had always wanted to work more closely with Bramshill and UK policing more generally, but that he was never quite sure who to speak to or who to trust, as he was tired of being consulted to by people who weren't even in the police service, but part of external commercial entities. He explained how he was developing his own new Jamaican Staff College strategy in order to support the Jamaican Constabulary who were under a lot of pressure with a huge increase in violent, gang-related crime. The UK had close ties with Jamaica dating back many decades, with a large community situated in London. The Metropolitan Police had been involved in supporting the Jamaican Constabulary Force [JCF] for a number of years in helping deal with organized crime threats, particularly drug-related issues. As the discussions unfolded and I looked more closely as to who exactly was working in Jamaica from within the UK law enforcement community itself, I soon stumbled across an executive policing development and reform program being funded by the Department For International Development [DFID], run out of the headquarters in Kingston. The UK consultancy charged with undertaking this work, worth several millions of pounds, was using a group of retired police officers and others to implement the project. On establishing contact, I quickly moved to share with them our own training and development objectives, agreed with the Jamaican staff college around the area of Critical Incident Command. As part of a new approach, we knew it was critical to map all of the UK activity in country, including the Met's own operational work, to see whether we could provide an integrated solution at the staff college that could enhance and feed into the Jamaican constabulary's own operational training plan. It was when I formally approached the DFID consultancy team that I discovered that most of the strategic-level operational commanders within the JCF knew very little or nothing at all of this executive reform program. Clearly, the UK was undertaking a unilateral investment project in this security sector without any reference to the very professionals it was meant to be developing. I am also led to believe that as much as 50% of the project cost was absorbed by the consultancy in fees alone. This was neither professional nor ethical from where I was standing as a public servant. PEAKE: This was a UK project? EYRE: Yes, this was a UK project. I am conscious that there may well have been other terms of reference, but to be stonewalled in the way that we were, and to understand the true lack of engagement with those officers within the JCF tasked with the uphill challenge of reducing violent crime on the island, was simply unacceptable. If I were to receive the same treatment today as I did then, I would be actively challenging those within the relevant government department-I had only just started out on my own journey and wasn't as confident then as perhaps I am now. However, the positive outcome of this project was an effective linkup with the Met police that enabled the use of live operational debriefs as part of the critical incident command paper-feed exercises-something that ensured our programs were rooted in real-time issues for the JCF officers we were privileged to work with. So coming back to your question about how we get engaged: it was interesting that by applying the processes we had developed here in the faculty, we were improving the quality of our training projects whilst exposing significant bad practice in many of the countries we were attempting to support. PEAKE: You alluded to this, but I want to just zero in on it a little bit, which is: there seemed to be some resistance from various quarters, perhaps-you used the Jamaica example, but there may be other cases that you may wish to reflect upon, resistance to your attempts to coordinate and cohere what you described as an uncoordinated and incoherent system. EYRE: At the heart of this lay a culture of informality, inconsistency, and money. Within months of being in the role, I regularly had to justify who I was, where I was from and what the purpose of our faculty was, being part of Centrex. It was as though there was this informal network of opposition to us as representatives of the UK police service getting our act together and providing legitimate and current policing support, be that operationally or in training and development. I was coming across more and more independent retired officers or "police-R-us" companies embedded within UK government departments, embassies, or within local police forces, that were not in the slightest interested in seeing a more coherent UK policing response. We ourselves were being accused of being commercially driven in the pursuit of our work. From an ethical and values-based point of view, I found this an extremely difficult place to be, especially having served in the Royal Marines and now as police staff representing a national law enforcement agency. Whilst I believe we were seen as a threat, relating back to my description of our previous inconsistent and uncoordinated approach back at home, as an organization many saw us as being incapable of providing a professional and integrated response to our colleagues internationally. PEAKE: So what strategies did you use to actually work through this? You mentioned it might be a personal case that you might reflect on; it might be working as part of Centrex with another institution; but how did you overcome what you're describing as this sort of everyday resistance that you encountered at various different levels in the Caribbean where you were working? EYRE: The first approach was based on stakeholder analysis. As soon as I started to realize the complexity to this informal arrangement, as I saw it, I spent a lot of time researching the established networks amongst the Foreign Office, DFID, and Home Office contacts and desk officers. I have already referred to the fact that many of these departments had established policing advisers. some seconded from the force, but most retired. Many of them relied on their own networks within policing, as there was no central coordination or point of contact within policing to go to when requesting support for UK government priorities internationally. It appeared that most government departments ran their own little black book of contacts back in the force, by the London-based desk officers or those embedded within embassies or high commissions overseas. Again the role of the Met here is important, because up until this point, the FCO [Foreign & Commonwealth Office], for one, would simply walk down the street to New Scotland Yard to seek assistance. So in terms of my stakeholder research, I soon became aware of the complexity and inconsistency that existed. Even those charged with managing overseas deployments, be that in the Foreign Office, DFID, MOD [Ministry of Defence], or Home Office, were none the wiser of each other's basic activities in the policing context. Added to this was the increase in companies offering access to databases of retired officers, and you had a potent mix of characters and departments each with their own agenda, own culture and opinion on what was best for those seeking UK policing support. All of that was disconnected and disjointed! PEAKE: Is it any more connected currently? EYRE: Not at this point. Chief constable Paul Kernaghan currently sits as the international portfolio holder within the Association of Chief Police Officers [ACPO]. He has been advocating a move towards a more coherent and integrated strategy for several years, both in support of UK government conflict resolution strategies (peace support operations) and more generally in other areas of UK policing assistance internationally. However, it's one thing holding the international portfolio, but it's another thing entirely being the chief constable of one of the largest forces in the country. My point here is that his ability to influence the domestic agenda, however hard he tries, is limited. That said, he has been consistent in raising the issues of improving international policing assistance, having contributed several papers on the subject. With UK government priorities increasing in areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the urgency for UK policing to improve its contribution is a given. However, the tripartite arrangement for UK policing, along with its parochial national policing plan and neighborhood (community) policing strategy, continues to see little buy-in by chiefs currently. Certainly we had started raising the issue that somehow we needed to take the UK contribution issue here a little more seriously. Perhaps the key moment came earlier this year, when the Inspectorate of Constabulary, headed up by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, was asked to do a very general and broad review on international policing. He very quickly concurred with much of what Paul Kernaghan had previously articulated, going on to recommend the need for a more comprehensive review by UK international policing and relevant government departments. In particular, he understood the issues associated with the lack of coordination, the lack of a coherent strategy, and just as importantly the fact that culturally it was still frowned upon if officers volunteered for international secondments, with many anecdotes describing the end to promotional prospects as a consequence. Sir Ronnie was aware of the work that we had been undertaking in improving our impact in the international training and development arena. Consequently, he was quick to recommend that the new National Policing Improvement Agency [NPIA] be tasked with the scoping of a new international policing assistance board which would act as a strategic oversight and advisory body, police-owned and police-led, co-chaired between ACPO and the FCO. With this body would also come the Secretariat or International Policing Assistance Group (IPAG), which would act as the coordinating and implementation function. Core to this development would be the handing back to the service of the responsibilities of international policing assistance management. Today, the concept and frameworks have been agreed in principle; a strategy is being developed; but right here and now, we still do not have the functioning process in place. What we do have from an NPIA perspective is a much clearer picture of the relationships that matter both within the UK government and the service more generally, including with the PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] and our colleagues at Tulliallan, the Scottish Police Staff College and Scottish government. Additionally, we understand better where our relationships should sit with associate or retired officer lists, private sector, academia, and non-government organizations, as well as non-departmental government teams such as the PRRT [Police Retraining and Rehabilitation Trust]. PEAKE: I'd like to move on from policing and that very broad context to discussing in particular some of the training programs that you've been involved in. What we're interested in is looking at some of the detail. What were the programs? How did you develop them? How did you teach on them? How did you instruct on them? What was the follow-up, etc.? So with your permission we'll move on to that. I noted from your description earlier that you've been involved in a lot of police training programs overseas. It might be worthwhile just to reflect on one of the programs that stands out for you and talk it through. How did you conceptualize the need for a program all the way down to delivering the program and beyond? EYRE: The first and most important part of what we do now is ensuring that what we do overseas is aligned with a core UK policing or government objective. Of course, we are often approached directly by sovereign states, which, again, we need to ensure fit with our overall strategic intent and can be justifiable in terms of committing resources. A good example in terms of supporting the regional government approach was the work we undertook recently in Mexico. Whilst Mexico isn't a former Commonwealth country, it certainly sits as a country of strategic importance to the UK in terms of business and security interests, being located where it is near to the Caribbean, Central America, and the USA. Politically, the UK high commission saw an opportunity to engage with the Mexican federal government in the area of community policing. From the outset, the Foreign Office saw the connection with the new Whitehall cross-departmental security sector reform strategy, and in consultation with ourselves in providing the expertise, we were prepared to initiate funding to get a project off the ground. What followed was an application of our new processes that saw several detailed training needs analyses take place, followed by a bespoke [custom-made] community policing training program for selected Mexican officers being delivered here at Bramshill, including a train-the-trainer component. This was but one phase of a more detailed and all encompassing project plan. It was clear from the president's office and the federal perspective that the Mexican government wanted to find ways and means with which it could improve its trust and effectiveness with the community. There are a number of pressures within Mexico, notwithstanding the issues around guns and gangs, people-trafficking, and the internal economic situation. But in particular, the federal government and the federal institutions felt that they were losing a grip on this trust aspect and wanted to look at it. They had heard and themselves researched issues around British community policing, around the concept of partnerships, and were very interested in it. So that's kind of where we set the scene. When it came to us, of course, the first thing we did was to go and interview a number of people now that we understood the overarching rationale behind it. In close cooperation with the high commission, we then looked at developing a project plan or project initiation document [PID]. This PID was designed in association with the funding framework in order to achieve value added from the outset. This enabled us and the high commission to jointly develop the project and submit to tender within the context of the UK government global conflict prevention pool fund. It was at that stage that you align your initial aims and objectives with a phased approach. In other words, what we focused on was an engagement to go and do the assessment around the feasibility and credibility of this request. The UK were happy with that from London: it met the requirements of the high commission in country, but more specifically, it assisted us in teasing out of the federal government exactly what it is they thought they were after with this whole trust thing and the community policing approach. All this was done in the context of our new processes. Finally, we recommended as part of the overall project objective that the initial engagements be piloted with one or two states, something evolved from the initial scoping study. PEAKE: I wonder if you would talk a little bit about what is the initial scoping deployment? How long did it take? Who was involved-not the names-but how you went about identifying the need for this, or confirming that there was a need? EYRE: The initial phase was dominated by the tender requirements, which in turn assisted with the development of an overall project plan. So we had that signed up to by the various stakeholders and with a contractual arrangement in place, we now focused on selecting the appropriate team to carry out the initial work. We sought community-policing experts who had the prerequisite skills and competencies to go out and ask the right kind of questions. We also established and designed a questionnaire to take out with us, which we had sent ahead of us, taking into account that we needed to build in time to have this material translated too. Where the Foreign Office played a big role, was in preparing the scene and identifying the right level of local stakeholder to engage. By the time our two officers had deployed, we had a clear understanding of the issues at hand and had reached an agreement on which two states were to receive the pilot program. These were Aguascalientes and Chihuahua. At this point, the other issue that we recommended from a training institution perspective was to pre-select a core group of officers from each of the states who would not only be heavily involved in the interview process but also be the provisional candidates for joining the project team as training candidates. In other words, from the outset we needed them to understand that they would be taking ownership for the long-term implementation of this project. This was new to the Mexicans, whose primary experience of external training support was that provided by the ILEA [International Law Enforcement Academies], which was quite prescriptive. The other big decision was centered on the fact that the contextualization of this community project would be done by the Mexican teams themselves, with our staff supporting them. It was also agreed from the outset that they would be brought here to the UK, to be taken away from their environment and given an opportunity and the space to work with our community policing training experts, to lead on the design of what they thought was suitable for them. Again I felt that from the outset they trusted us and the process, especially in the context that we had asked them to coordinate the local feedback to the questionnaires, etc. The upshot of all of that: four officers selected from each of the states, which included two female officers, were brought to the UK. They spent a month at Bramshill working with our teams. They went out to practically experience community policing in action here in the UK. They gathered a lot of information themselves and, facilitated by our training experts, then proceeded to design a bespoke training engagement to roll out in those two states. Also embedded in that final design was a level-three evaluation process which would be administered back in Mexico once the pilot programs had been implemented. PEAKE: What do you mean by level one to level three? EYRE: Level one is what we generally refer to as in-class "happy sheets." These represent a very simple response at capturing the students' initial feedback on their learning experience, the facilities, etc., at the end of the course. Level two is when you go back several months later to actually see how the training had been implemented, any impact it had had in terms of the students that had been through it and with the trainers that took part in it. Level three is, say, a year later. You actually go back, you revisit where the training took place, to actually look at the difference it made within the workplace in terms of empirical data. Level three was the one where we were then going to-and this remained core to the actual design of the whole process. By the end of the week, everyone understood at that stage that we were going to be back in six months' time, in Mexico, after seeing the programs being delivered. We were then going to ask them in twelve months' time, that same team, to come and provide the feedback at a national seminar chaired by the federal government. They would deliver the data and feedback from those pilot projects, and we would facilitate the seminar. So you can see, therefore, that what we had ended up developing was in fact a multi-phase training project encompassing not one but two years' worth of engagement. Phase one was the initial project setup. Phase two was the scope-out in Mexico. Phase three was the bespoke training engagement here in the UK to design the program. Phase four was their delivery of that program, and then phase five had the two parts to it, which were the long-term evaluation and then the national seminar at which the findings of the overall project were to be presented by the Mexican teams themselves. PEAKE: So all said and told, from the initial approach until the end of the level-three evaluation in stage five, how long did this process take? How many people would have been involved in this process? EYRE: It has taken two years. The national seminar was completed last month, October 2007, and essentially it kicked off in the fall of 2005. So it has taken two years. From a UK policing perspective, we've probably used up to seven or eight key staff and officers from within the agency, but of course there have been a number of forces that were involved in terms of visits. But the core staff that were involved in doing the program here and then going out to help facilitate delivery and then the eventual evaluations amounted to about seven or eight of us in total. But from the FCO's perspective, they had a project manager nominated within the high commission. It was joined up with the FCO teams back here in London, so the procurement and all of that was included. But from the Mexicans' perspective, you essentially had this cohort of four senior officers who were basically trained as trainers, taken through the design process as project owners. So you had those eight officers in total delivering this program across each of the states, Aguascalientes and Chihuahua, which themselves involved a number of precincts. Then, as I say, the final phase took place last month. We're waiting for the evaluation to come back. Suffice it to say that the federal government was delighted with what they were initially hearing back from the states. The other point that I must add, which was not too dissimilar to our experience in Jamaica, was that we discovered the FCO had been piloting a parallel program on restorative justice engagement. To highlight my earlier point on coordination, believe it or not, Surrey police had been engaged in providing an officer with restorative police experience, and at one point, the FCO didn't see the need to introduce ourselves to each other! PEAKE: How did you find out about that project? EYRE: We bumped into each other at the high commission. As soon as we discovered he was there and involved in restorative justice, guess what happened? Very quickly we were able to identify a connection with our own community partnership project and so approached Surrey police to align the two programs, which they were also keen to do. Our procedures were working, and now we had qualified and current UK policing experts from different backgrounds working together, although the chance meeting at the high commission was indeed timely. In due course, our community and justice work would be jointly presented at the national seminar. So by default, we managed to provide a very coordinated and joined-up response. Of course, key to this new way of doing business-was not so much about business development in policing terms, but much more rooted in the concept of improving international policing standards. As stated, Mexico in this case was important for the FCO, and during the commission of the overall project we were hoping, through our community engagement in the two pilots states, to improve trust in the local police, thereby effecting a more professional response, and in so doing start to tackle some of the strategic challenges facing the country such as gang-related crime, organized crime, the epidemic problems associated with kidnapping, drugs, guns and people-trafficking. This in turn would indirectly influence an improvement in security with regards UK tourism to Mexico. So for us this particular project supported many of our high-level objectives, particularly in the application of our integrated training and developing strategy at the NPIA. PEAKE: You mentioned the two states in which you are working, and then you also mentioned that there are 10 other states that have approached you subsequently. I'd like to ask you what the decision was to pilot in those two states as opposed to two other states. Why focus on these two states? Were other parts of the country unaffected? Were strategies different in one state as opposed to the other two states? A series of questions getting at some of the complexities of program decision-making and differences between the two states and the other states, and between Chihuahua and the other? EYRE: That responsibility lies firmly with the Foreign Office. In terms of the decision-making associated with the selection of individuals or indeed the regional states, this would be organized between the high commission, federal and state bodies. What I do understand in terms of this project setup was that the selection of these two states was influenced by personality, in particular by the strength of character of the two Attorney Generals. The female Attorney General especially had a clear vision and understanding of where this project would benefit a state, but probably just as importantly, where it would benefit her political aspirations. My point here being that the selection criteria applied by the high commission in country will always have to take cognizance of the various political relationships that exist, as you could see very quickly that they were using this as a political tool to advocate better community relationships in trying to make a difference in improving their responsibility to the communities they served. A final benefit to point out for the program was that the community project also brought together policing and the "fiscals,'' the local judges. We had the justice sector very much engaged in this project from the start as part of our security sector and justice reform agenda, eventually having them both present at the seminar, which again was impactive. PEAKE: I'd like to ask a question-I began by asking this before we meandered; I think it would be very interesting-which is about context. You mentioned the UK policing advisor who was an expert in community policing; you mentioned your training advisor who had that portfolio for that particular region; and those were the two lead people from your agency that were involved in developing the project. You then mentioned the other people that were involved, the Mexican senior officers that came to Bramshill. So my question really is, how did you and how did your fellow officers come to familiarize yourselves with the political nuances of these two states, the politics of these states and the structures of these states, but also the language of the states? Was there a language barrier that you had to overcome when designing and thinking through this program? EYRE: In practical terms, this becomes part of the research of the policing advisers in close liaison with the foreign office. So when we get the first inquiry or approach, particularly from UK government or indeed a direct state request, the team and the regional desks both take responsibility for researching, enhanced by the role of the high commission, in particular the political secretaries, in country. In terms of the nuances of the politics and perhaps some of the specific relationships involved, by definition we have to take our lead from the high commission. That's our local knowledge as best we have it, prior to eventually developing the relationships within the local force once deployed. What is interesting, though: as soon as we do get on the ground as uniformed officers carrying out the scoping study or in fact in direct delivery or facilitation of the project, the moment our colleagues know that they're speaking to a fellow officer, the barriers come down and a level of trust is secured. How I got around this issue, not being a uniformed officer but a civilian member of staff, was that I was able to relate back to my former operational background and leadership experiences in the forces. I would use this as a tool to secure my relationships. PEAKE: To provide legitimacy for yourself? EYRE: I would have to do that literally the moment I stepped off the plane with any police colleague who might see me as just another consultant. What I became very aware of was that in many cases our colleagues talked of "consultant fatigue," referring to their frustrations of speaking with people who didn't carry the prerequisite currency or legitimacy required to build trust amongst fellow professionals. Consequently, often they would go through the motions of speaking to external consultants presented to them by a donor, never really engaging fully, and so putting the project at risk from the outset. So going back to my point about our team, we were always quick to assess the scale of previous support provided in order to understand whether we needed to do that initial police-to-police reassurance exercise. This would then be reinforced during social interactions with those same officers, always ensuring linkage back to the high commission and our legitimate points of contact. This part of our relationship-building approach also enabled us to cross-reference the accuracy of what the high commission had done prior to our arrival. Generally speaking, you would always find out that there were one or two bits which the high commission would never get to know because of the politics. So it was only once you were in amongst the team and starting to roll up your sleeves and get involved in training or scoping and asking some of the questions on your own that you would get a real sense of the nuances and challenges. The context that always needed confirming in order to gain the respect of one another was operational. PEAKE: So what, for example, did you not know that you found out through this back-channel research? EYRE: You would never be quite sure about the credibility and legitimacy of the selection process for officers being chosen to assist the scoping review or partake in a training intervention. In the case of our Mexican delegation, we were able to identify early on which of the eight officers would either find the process difficult, or simply not be engaged in the project. The relationship-building exercise would enable you to find out issues about the nature of the people you were working with, as well as the behind-the-scenes perceptions, expectations, or attitudes surrounding their whole training contribution. It's something that the high commission would never be able to discover for you prior to a project commencing. Finally the issue of politics comes into play. In this example, gaining trust and respect enabled us to know more about the influence of the two officials that were leading this project in terms of the reputations of their attorney generals back home. We got to understand the mechanics of that and the politics behind it. This important information was key to enabling us to develop accurate aims and objectives for the community project back in the pilot states. This in turn would facilitate a communications plan for the media who were becoming interested in the project locally. Multiple benefits can be accrued very quickly by establishing that legitimacy and trust at the start. PEAKE: That prompts another question, which is: in what language were these interactions taking place? How did you circumnavigate or circumvent any potential lost-in-translation problems, any language difficulties that you may have between English and Spanish? EYRE: Over the years, we have become adept in working effectively with translators. I do believe that the UK style of police training, which is action-oriented, student-centered and interactive, is well suited to providing a very focused and deliberate style of delivery that enables us to work at the right pace and achieve consistency in understanding with those whose first language is not English. This type of training method sees us less reliant on PowerPoint and more on the engagement, testing and adjusting all the time with the questioning. We've developed a way of delivering training through translation, which we think works very well and is reflected in the evaluation and feedback we receive. So in terms of this Mexican project, it was delivered in Spanish. PEAKE: Thank you. You've been very helpful in giving a very specific and very detailed case of good practice, where a training program, from its origins and all the various stages in which it progressed and all the issues that you had to work your way through in order to make it remain what was a good idea at the beginning, remains a good idea two years on. I wonder if I can ask you to talk about cases where there was maybe a bad practice or less good practice in which you've been involved in training programs, or the development of the idea was not good, or the execution of it, in a similar way to the manner in which you've walked us through these various phases in the Mexico project? Are there any examples of less good practice that spring to mind? EYRE: There are two examples. The first project to outline was with regards an Access to Justice program being delivered in Lesotho, South Africa. This was a high-value (in terms of donor funding) and long-term project, lasting four years. PEAKE: Which years were they? EYRE: This was from 2003 to 2007.The program was actually closed prematurely this year by DFID for a variety of reasons. This had occurred on completion of a wide-range review of African projects by the department. This particular project had been closed prematurely because DFID felt that there was not enough progress across all the various strands of the project. Why we found ourselves in this position was probably something to do with the fact that this small, relatively inexperienced international faculty, working then within the Central Police Training Development Authority, had been asked to and accepted responsibility for the project management of a multiple-level justice sector project, with many of the strands lying comfortably outside of a policing remit. We certainly had never done a project of this complexity before, although there were one or two areas, such as leadership and community policing, which we knew we could do. By default, we inadvertently found ourselves falling into the project, not to deliver on the specific policing components but actually as the main project lead. We were now running a project where policing formed just one part of a broader social engagement, including the development of an HIV/AIDS initiative along with local education and community partnership programs. There was a lot of money involved, and at that time income generation for the faculty was added to the objectives of the project, a mistake from the outset as far as I was concerned. It was also going to involve establishing in-country project managers, or to be run from the UK, although the donor project team itself was based in Pretoria, not in Lesotho. So there was distance with the core sponsor; there was distance between us as a training institution, but that's a training institution that is now saying it can project-manage what is inherently long-term and complex. As it turned out, we did well to achieve about 50% of program objectives and to a high standard, but not surprisingly these tended to be connected to the policing bits, where our relationships and expertise were strongest. I would say the other 50% fell between two stools. We ultimately had a responsibility for that, although the poor governance structure and lack of coordination in region by DFID meant we all had a hand in facilitating an unsuccessful program. My main fear today is that there are still multiple overseas projects either in the development, security, or diplomacy arenas that still don't have appropriate levels of governance and project management principles in place. Closer to home, I know that the UK government are still committing to major rule-of-law and security-oriented projects, with implicit policing and rule of law objectives, without referring to the UK police service at all! The second project that didn't work out the way I would have liked in terms of applying the principles of security sector reform from a policing perspective: it was our engagement in El Salvador, in Central America. Here again, we had established a close relationship with the ANSP [Academia Nacional de Seguridad Publica]. Essentially it was working with the El Salvadoran police and their police academy. Now we had been asked some time ago to scope, on behalf of the Foreign Office located in El Salvador, a witness protection and criminal intelligence program, as the El Salvadorans were very interested in the UK national intelligence model. So that was the pretext. Consequently we carried out an initial scope along the lines of what I have described already. PEAKE: Which year would this been? EYRE: This was around 2001-2002. So that scope had gone in and had reported back. These were the recommendations in terms of what we discovered, questioning members of the El Salvadoran police service, the PNC and also the academy. There was then a pregnant pause of up to two years-not uncommon in the international training and development arena-which could have been as a result of the donor (in this case the FCO) having key staff changeover, or just because they sat on the report, funding may have had to be reapplied for, or because the EL Salvadorans momentarily lost interest. However, it was at this point, after recently joining the academy, when I received contact from the FCO, confirming the background to the original work, but that they now wanted to initiate a capacity-building project, or as we called it, a "train the trainer" program for the El Salvador police [PNC], associated with the reconstitution of their criminal intelligence unit structure throughout the country-one of the original recommendations. For a second time, we deployed on an assessment which I knew straight away would end up covering some of the same ground-in terms of economies of scale this wasn't particularly smart, but then again, I was dealing with a new team at the FCO who in turn had not really been briefed fully on our previous work. So here we were experiencing a type of dŽjˆ vu, concluding with recommendations not that dissimilar to the original findings. This time there was signup by all parties, and consequently we developed a partnership project with both the academy and the PNC on a new intelligence model and how it might be applied to the El Salvadoran context. The urgency for the EL Salvadorans was the pressure they were under in dealing with the increased guns and gang issues in country, and the impact that this was having on their social contract with the community and decline in citizen security. From an FCO perspective, regional capacity-building was a key objective which we recognized, and as a result of our scoping work, we identified an opportunity to get be PNC to consider inviting one or two key officers in the criminal intelligence community from neighbouring countries such as Guatemala and Honduras. In this way, we felt there was a unique opportunity to facilitate discussions around the establishment of a simple regional intelligence network born out of this very tactical engagement with El Salvador. This in turn would fit with our SSR policing strategy. This received very positive support and the project commenced. We were asked to do a level-two evaluation several months into the project, which in fact took place roughly a year later. What we had reported back to us from our EL Salvadoran colleagues prior to deploying on this evaluation, was that the PNC training teams we had helped develop had, with their superiors, gone on to reform their intelligence unit formation from being one small random group of officers in headquarters to a setup of 20 established units within the 22 regions within El Salvador. This was very positive news to report against the project objectives-so far, so good. When we eventually deployed, we ended up being asked to also look at the witness protection system, again alongside the intelligence unit evaluation. Suddenly there [was] enthusiasm to look across the piece. On this occasion we had an opportunity to link up with the Metropolitan Police again, and with one of its specialist units involved in informant handling. We were happy enough to multitask and achieve some value added for the FCO on the deployment, but our enthusiasm and excitement on the news of the intelligence units was short lived when the initial results of our evaluation work revealed that most of the local officers responsible for the progress and establishment of the new structures were no longer available, or had read been redeployed. Consequently, the new units that had been established were found to be poorly run and lacking any coherent or effective procedures. Suddenly we were finding it difficult to find and engage with the people we had worked with who we felt were going to lead and own this. In fact we were struggling to achieve the very trust and relationships I stressed were critical earlier on in the interview. PEAKE: What was the reason why there was this discrepancy between those that you worked with and those that were working in these units? EYRE: The reality of the situation for me was all to do with the politics and leadership issues within the academy and the PNC. As all of this work was being undertaken, El Salvador held its national elections. We soon realized that we had a number of officers from the PNC and the academy now actively jostling for potential positions within the new government. The result: disengagement from our work, which was no longer seen as a priority, with no one officer being prepared to take ownership of the support they had been so generously gifted by the UK government. The reality and risk of international training engagements. The upshot of all of this was in fact a third return to El Salvador a couple of years later, this time to look at the witness protection developments, again under very much similar circumstances: "We have some money available to pick up on some of your former work." Yet again, we were hopeful; one or two individuals from neighbouring countries had indeed remained in touch to develop a basic regional strategy group (or steering group) as they had originally intended. We were once again to be disappointed-the tactical and operational benefits of seeing through some of this work that we had helped to partner with them on would never be realized due to the influence of politics in the region at that time. That was hugely disappointing for us. PEAKE: I'd like to move on a little bit, but before I do I want to ask you a question, something about simple reading and writing skills of the police officers you worked with. Obviously, to be a police officer one needs to be skilled in various elements, but he or she needs to be able to write a report, to be able to communicate information that is in a report onward to other criminal justice agencies. Do you have any experience of working with police officers that may have deficiencies in reading and writing, and how have you gone about trying to make those problems go away? EYRE: Very interesting story connected to that critical incident command work we were doing in Jamaica. Obviously, the work we were doing with the Jamaican Staff College and Dormah Harrison fitted into an overall strategy. But Dormah himself admitted one of the challenges that the Jamaican constabulary had was in dealing with political pressure being brought to bear on the constabulary in dealing with the high increase in gang- and drug-related violent crime, alongside the fact that many of the executive and operational strategies developed simply weren't being implemented down at station level. What we discovered was that in many cases, the effectiveness of stations in certain precincts was down to the strength of character of the officers. In other words, there was almost a policing sub-culture in existence, which relied more on personality than the implementation of operational plans by written or verbal briefs. So you had the one group being responsible for dealing with strategic decision-making and operational command, thinking that things were cascading down to the 'troops', when in fact the reality was that very little of it was getting down to the tactical area. At this level, there was almost an operational language of its own, which included the way in which communication by the original verbal brief was carried out. Whilst this is something I observed in the Caribbean, I found examples of this in Africa too, primarily because of the distances between headquarters and rural precincts, where in many cases officers are left to their own devices. Consequently, one of the issues that we found in terms of engagement involving language and trying to get some consistency in the application of basic standard operating procedures was in a project we undertook in Cameroon. Conscious that many of those we would be speaking to would be predominantly French speaking, we developed a laminated, waterproof check list, or mini set of SOPs, for officers working in different areas of policing, be it regarding interviewing techniques or be it in traffic, in terms of stop and search, or something along those lines. As a technique, the development of this type of document were worth their weight in gold practically. We had some of the best and most successful programs hinging on this very tactical initiative. So going back to the delivery of our critical incident command [CIC] course in Jamaica and the silver [operational] command level program. Linked to our team at the training college was a preselected group of Jamaican trainers that would be undertaking a train-the-trainer role on the program in order that they become the core CIC subject staff and be able to run the program as a weekly or monthly live training exercise in stations as part of a force-wide CIC training plan, looking very much to enhance the effectiveness of officers at the tactical level. It would be housed and homed and owned by the staff college, but it would be disseminated through this train-the-trainer team to the precincts where tabletop exercises could now be run based on real-time and current types of scenario: a double murder, a wife-beating, or a drug-related gang incident. This was a key objective. But then, right in the middle of the program, our CIC experts were approached by two of the senior operational executives from the Chief Officer team who asked for a private word. They proceeded to explain that they were aware of the program, and that whilst they had a basic understanding of CIC principles from experience and from books that they'd read, plus attendance on the occasional seminar overseas, the truth was that they weren't altogether confident of their role in CIC at the gold level. In other words, they wanted to use this opportunity of having UK CIC experts in country to help them better understand their role at the executive level. To receive this type of approach and get a level of honesty from senior officers is rare. However, the upshot of this was that the team agreed to run impromptu evening master classes on gold-level CIC responsibilities-almost as a one-to-one coaching intervention for members of this executive team. PEAKE: Which would have consisted of what? EYRE: Essentially, because the trainers are experienced in gold-level command training, they would have focused on laying out a framework of understanding on how the command and control aspects of a critical incident should run, what communication processes should be in place, how to log and record the incident, how to deploy resources effectively, how to delegate responsibility during the actual procedure, the engagement of the incident. So here we were exploring what was being done at the senior-level command with the executive in managing an incident. This initial discussion was key, and what we discovered was a simple routine whereby members of the executive team who happened to be on duty when a major incident occurred, irrespective of the backup procedures in place or which other senior officers were on duty, would typically default to calling their best mate within the executive branch via mobile phone to help run incidents. As before, this was an informal procedure not uncommon within policing institutions and teams around the world, particularly in those countries under pressure, where policing is generally underfunded, under-resourced, and as an organization generally regarded as a second-class agency, especially when compared to the military. It suddenly dawns on you that these officers are always trying to implement government strategies in terms of community and citizen security, yet are left to do so essentially with one arm tied behind their back. In simple, the police are almost set up to fail in their primary objective of upholding the rule of law. This I found intriguing and disturbing. Back to Africa, the reality is that educationally, there is no investment-or very little, as I saw-in the ongoing personal development of officers at the tactical or at the operational level. It is for this reason that one of our growth areas in terms of leadership training is requests to run initial supervisors training. This enables us to deliver basic team management, personnel management, and personal responsibility principles to tactical-level leaders and their charges. We keep the programs deliberately simple and straightforward, ensuring that they are locally oriented and understood by the participants. PEAKE: What strategies do you use to actually respond to those requests? What are the elements in this course? EYRE: The key element is this concept of leadership of self, in terms of personal responsibility and the way in which you administer yourself, and your understanding of how best to use the system around you in carrying out your responsibilities. Very quickly, we then move them into the areas of team management at the tactical level, such as small team and station management, etc. So the issue is first around self, then around team, that all the time focuses on the importance of good, sound, workable administrational functions. We look at communication skills around that, and how they fit with low-level partnerships. In other words, the whole thing is around individual development but associated with their local environment; both their station, the team, local community, and around ways in which they can better engage with them, engender trust, be approachable whilst all the time improving their confidence as a tactical leader. That lies at the heart of our initial supervisor work. From our perspective, the most profound impact we have is definitely on developing a bottom-up approach to leadership development. So instead of always being seen to go in to assist executive leadership training-which, don't get me wrong, is also very important and lies at the heart of our UK Bramshill programs-overseas, there is definitely a movement toward this tactical-level leadership engagement. We ourselves are very excited by it because we think that in terms of Security Sector Reform [SSR] and regional capacity-building, this is the place we think we can have the biggest impact in terms of improving policing, and in turn community safety. PEAKE: If I can characterize what you say, perhaps some of the previous engagements were focused at too high or too operational a level, when in reality they may have gone over the heads of those the training was being delivered to? The new approach involves going down a level in terms of the officers with whom you are working, but also the aptitudes of the officers to do what you're expecting? EYRE: I think you've got it. It still remains a challenge, though, as many of those who make themselves available for command courses are in fact the ones that sign off on the programs in the first place. More often than not they're not actually the appropriate people for a program. It means today we spend a lot of time during project setup discussing with our colleagues the importance of selecting and recruiting the right caliber of officer for training. The lack of focus in this one area of selection is probably the single most common cause of a failed program, to my mind, and yet remains commonplace amongst donors (HMG) and organizations assisting in this regard. PEAKE: Can you talk a little bit more about that? EYRE: In some cases, government will come to us to support a development program based on our reputation, and in particular our leadership training credentials. Often the initial discussion will see us confirming that the leadership component will be part of a broader program, such as a counter-terrorism project. The government desk will confirm that they have established relationships with the local force, with the national executive, and other key stakeholders politically. We will then ask the question about selection for the program. Invariably they will confirm that they are OK to do this locally. At that moment we know there's likely to be risk involved, as we as a training provider cannot guarantee the competency or quality of the participants that we will be tasked to develop. That subsequent local engagement between the high commission/embassy and senior executive of that national force or government department will tend to be politically oriented and not technically. It will also be influenced by funding constraints and timings, the upshot of all of this being that there will always be individuals or a group who attend that training intervention who shouldn't be there. They tend to be there because of their status or as a result of patronage. That's what I mean by that. We're trying now during the initial analysis and engagement phases to get both the donor and the client to understand the HR components, so that we can improve in the quality and suitability of those selected to attend the programs. PEAKE: Do you have any examples about how you successfully managed to identify a problem in terms of the wrong individuals coming to inappropriate or not applicable training and finding a way to solve the problem that presented itself? EYRE: This is not an easy issue to solve and remains a clear and present danger to most training and development interventions internationally. What we've done, though, is focus very hard on stating the importance of having selection writ large in the project terms of reference and agreed by all parties prior to sign-off. This is where we concentrate-along with getting the HR plan built into the initial analysis phase, i.e., ensure we get to look at the overall force HRM [human resource management] strategy (if one in fact exists!). Making ourselves available in this regard has in many cases led to a parallel piece of work in an advisory capacity, in reviewing their current HR strategies and structures within the force, which we now know to add value to the specific training program we were engaged to deliver in the first place. The consequence of this is that HRM is starting to play a big impact in a number of our established capital training projects. So in the Middle East we've been doing a lot of work with United Arab Emirates, and the Abu Dhabi police in particular. The Abu Dhabi police, I have to say, are probably one of the most strategic-thinking police organizations I've met internationally, bearing in mind some of the cultural issues associated with working in this region. They are showing an openness to looking at the whole issue of recruitment and selection in a country where family ties, time served, and patronage are important to them. Today they're actually taking a bold step to frame competencies, to have skills and attributes agreed to, to have their training schools aligned to an overall training strategy, all being brought together under an overall HRM plan. This objective culminated in a year-long HR project which has seen the Abu Dhabi police being put up for a national HR award. However, the appropriateness of people coming on to police training and development programs will always remain one of the key challenges to effective capacity-building. Today I would see many in countries courses having as many as 50% of their participants being of the wrong rank or wrong competency. PEAKE: Big statistic. EYRE: That's why I'm saying to you that this is a very clear and present danger in international training and development work. PEAKE: I'd like to move on to the topic of management, if I may, and ask-you alluded to this, and you started to mention it in your last intervention about management: building up the management of a police service, financial systems, accountability systems, disciplinary systems, HR systems. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the management reforms that you have been involved in as part of your work in the international academy? EYRE: I would say that our current work in Cameroon would be a suitable example. Again, this formed part of a regional strategy initiative by the UK High Commission in Cameroon, a predominantly French-speaking nation, but with historic ties to the UK. We were asked to get involved under a UK regional development and security sector reform initiative. It was to work with both the prison service as well as the police, which was fairly unique for us. It would be a partnership program with the High Commission, the British Counsel (a non-governmental organization), and the Cameroon police, and prison executives. From a Cameroon police perspective, we were briefed on the fact that they had two structures in place, the national Gendarmerie and the Civil police. This project would see us working with the civil police, although we did call into the Gendarmerie out of courtesy and to make them aware of the project. On that same point, we ensured that we visited the French high commission, again to inform them of our work and keep them sighted on the objectives in the event that downstream they might want to be involved too. The high commission wanted us to go take a stock-take of the civil police's current structures, but in particular focusing on their strategic direction and management functions. We initiated the project in accordance with our SOPs. We were fortunate to have the Cameroon executive provide their top team, including their number two within the civil police, along with the deputy commissioner of the prison service. Applying the principle we had used effectively for our Mexican project, we brought the executive teams to the UK (Bramshill) in order to do a behind-closed-doors strategic analysis, away from distraction back at home and in an environment that facilitated open and honest debate. This intervention saw us run them through a specific strategic analysis tool used by us as well as the academy. We tested their current mission statements, reviewed their current legislation and strategic policies, and generally tested and challenged them accordingly. The upshot of this process saw the Cameroon teams start to question and challenge some of their own preconceptions whilst also identifying strengths in their current thinking. We again facilitated engagement in such a way that the Cameroon teams knew that they were in fact leading on their own analysis. From here they returned to Cameroon to present their initial findings to both the UK high commission and Cameroon executives. Returning to my point about the visit to the French embassy, they very much appreciated this during the initial setup phase and confirmed that they would indeed take a watching brief, as there may well be some correlation with support they were wishing to provide to the gendarmerie. This again supported our aim to promote in-country integration of the security sector, be that locally or between potential donors. The primary recommendation on their return was to rethink key aspects of their strategies. They also wanted to rethink their approach to management responsibilities, and in particular the governance structures and committee processes which would be most appropriate for reviewing their strategic frameworks and current legislation, to see if there were any gaps or missing links. They established a working group looking at the operational management of the executive, again prompted by them. This was all as a result of that strategic analysis tool used in the UK, which got them thinking in the right direction. We were impressed with how engaged they were from the outset, could see clearly the importance of bringing them away from Cameroon during the critical first phase, but most importantly appreciated that as senior members of their executives, being given the time and space to commit to this program in a way that meant they really did have ownership of the recommendations and plan. We've just been back to carry out our third workshop out there. One of the additional outputs-going back to that standard operation procedure process we previously developed and referred to earlier in this interview, that laminated SOP card we described-well, this executive team created their own card to act as a prompt in terms of some of the things they wanted to remember as a leader within the executives and from a management responsibility perspective. They created this themselves, and I thought that that was fascinating. During this whole experience, we knew all too well that they had very little resource, huge responsibility and expectation, on-going tensions between themselves and the Gendarmerie, with the prisons also under significant pressure, particularly with regard to the massive overcrowding problem and lack of funding. Yet, for the first time, they were creating what I saw as a very enthusiastic, practical strategy that people could actually pick up, read, and understand. We're still involved in that process at the moment. PEAKE: What have been some of the difficulties that you faced in attempting to instantiate and inculcate management principles into host country police services? Are there any specific examples that you can think of that reflect that? EYRE: Currently we are supporting the Trinidad and Tobago government and the leadership development component of their new serious anti-crime unit called the SAUTT [Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago]. It's a new establishment, a new organization created a couple of years ago by an executive government decree in response to a significant increase in violent crime and the perceived failure of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service [TTPS] in dealing with this. I believe that the TTPS was working as best they could under the circumstances, but the creation of this new body, the SAUTT, was to create its own unique challenges. As background, Trinidad is a very commercial, industrial island and probably one of the wealthiest and quickest growing economies in the Caribbean. And yet they have this significant crime issue, both low-level, within the communities, as well as part of a more organized crime threat. It was clear that the Trinidad and Tobago government were very engaged in improving citizen security. In terms of project management, though, the period before the SAUTT came on the scene was important. Prior to SAUTT asking us to partner with them to create their own leadership management institute in Trinidad, we had already been working with the TTPS in terms of supporting SSR and capacity building in this region, which very much met with our criteria and that of the Foreign Office. A number of their officers had been to Bramshill, so there's that historic relationship. In fact the Trinidad and Tobago government, prior to making this decision on the creation of SAUTT, had sent over several operational-level officers to the UK in two batches of three-month secondments. The purpose was to get exposure to UK policing operations and procedures as related to their own disciplines, in order to consider appropriate improvements back there in Trinidad. Additionally they each deployed with a preselected project from their area of policing to help focus their experiences. We had officers from CID community policing and traffic, to name but a few. We managed this secondment program into the UK forces. The second part of this program took place back in Trinidad, whereupon a we facilitated a workshop with the group to pick out the lessons learned from their secondment, and to encapsulate those into a document and a presentation that could be given to the security minister. Some real issues around what were the key drivers at the tactical, operational and strategic levels, in terms of all their individual projects, were debated. We opted not to try and present the same format for all the projects, but to select a priority project relating to some of the issues currently being experienced in the country, namely investigations, and use that to present their findings to the minister and the process that they were to recommend as part of a four-year plan. From here we were then to develop a suite of options for the government to consider in partnership with the TTPS as to which priority engagements it should focus on. We successfully ran this first process in Trinidad, encapsulating some really great thinking. We really got a sense of the pressures that the TTPS were under and where they wanted to focus at the local level. I personally led on the feedback to the minister on behalf of the group because they wanted an independent to do it. I talked them through the process, and I talked about what the findings were, etc. The minister said from the outset that as a result of this project, he wanted to see an environment that promoted better communication within the service in order to re-engage with the community and re-establish trust with them. He was clear that this trust was vital to establishing the building blocks of a better environment that had citizen security at its heart. We then ran the second phase of the program, which will go some way to answering your question. This phase would see a second deployment of officers to the UK with a facilitated feedback session been presented to the minister along the same lines. Once we had done that, the intention was to then hand over the implementation of the prioritized projects selected by the group and minister-all of which would be encapsulated in a strategic document. We stress that this would be locally owned and led. It was at that moment that we discovered politically, time had run out for the TTPS. The minister was not prepared to wait to receive the second set of feedback in line with the process agreed, as he had grown impatient with the TTPS. We stressed that this meant the program would be incomplete. However, he was adamant that the priority now was to deliver some quick wins and that there was no more time to develop strategies and subsequent implementation plans. He also stated that this had been made clear to the management within the TTPS. However in subsequent discussions with the commissioner of police on how to move forward, he appeared not to be clear on this change in direction politically. Therefore in terms of your question, we as project managers found ourselves in the middle of a scenario, where in spite of the best-laid plans, the politics and that moment had overridden our objectives. We knew from that moment forward that we would not only be required to manage our projects in classic terms of retraining and development, but would have no option but to manage the politics of the service and the expectations of government, and in due course the management of the SAUTT. As an observation, you could argue that they were falling between both stools. They were failing in their executive management responsibilities to the policing project whilst being ineffective in managing the politics surrounding it. For the TTPS, this looks like a real lose-lose situation. Again, everyone wanted them to deliver now, quick wins, because of the political imperative, but managerially, it was clear that they didn't have the confidence to meet the challenges ahead. This is why I believe the SAUTT was created, as a political response to take charge, and by default to create a new security structure that could deliver the community security the government so desperately wanted. Taking this forward to our working with the SAUTT, we did work very hard to ensure that the SAUTT were engaged with all of the Trinidad police people we had been working with before, as we assessed a very real risk at one point that they would very quickly not include them in all of the investment that was now being provided by the government and/or the development of initiatives now being requested. I would like to think that in some small way we played a crucial part in ensuring that many of the key talented senior officers in the TTPS would remain involved in the SAUTT project, thus maintaining some level of integration. Today the part we're playing in helping develop the leadership program has both institutions sending through their officers to participate. PEAKE: You've talked a lot about-and I want to zero in on this-in the time that we've talked about management principles and leadership principles, you've also talked about leveraging your background in the private sector and your work in management. I wonder if I can, before we move on to another section, drill down into that a little bit and ask you to reflect upon the amount of guidelines and material that is published on police reform that appears as policy papers, as reports, as contributions on web sites. Which material have you found particularly useful as you have developed reform as pertains to management? Also, that question equally applies to training reform in general: is there any particular standout material that you've used? Are there any reflections that you have on material in general? EYRE: In general, most of this material, the knowledge derived from the implementation of projects and indeed the lessons learned remain hidden to one another within the police service and security sector in general. We know that a variety of materials exist and that indeed tools and techniques have been developed, but none of this is held centrally and so remains hidden. PEAKE: You mean the national service? EYRE: The UK Police Service. It remains hidden to us, the very body with the currency and legitimacy of the UK policing brand. It's only because of my personal interest in the area of security sector reform and my ambition to help raise awareness within UK policing, and certainly within my own organization of its principles, that people are starting to understand where SSR and UK international policing assistance can be aligned to both our own national foreign policy objectives and to our own national policing plan here in the UK. In other words, the time is right for UK policing to embrace globalization, especially in the context of what global security means to our own citizen safety and national security. Police-specific research and context is starting to be written about and debated in a much more coherent way, particularly in the security and development arena, where historically the emphasis tended to lie in defense, diplomacy, and development priorities. The work of OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] is a case in point, whereby policing, and in particular community policing, is explored in some depth with regard to security and development work around Europe and the Balkans. The executive policing experience in Kosovo is another area where I found a number of very useful reports in terms of practitioners' experiences on the ground. It makes references to the impact of transnational organized crime as well as references to the pressures of immigration, drugs, people trafficking-in particular with regard to the sex industry-and financial crime. But what I'm not seeing is this information developed and written in a police language, with the police service being used as the key reference point. An example closer to home was over the recent production of a guidelines handbook by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office here in the UK. It was written in order to improve awareness and understanding of UK police officers being deployed on Peace Support Operations. It was produced by various consultants, including retired police associates, who had specific experience in these environments. Interviews were held with key stakeholders, for example with the Ministry of Defense police, the primary contributor to the UK policing commitments to Kosovo, Iraq, and latterly Afghanistan. When we were engaged-that is to say, Centrex, the national policing agency responsible for the writing of doctrine-we submitted the document to review by our doctrine team. PEAKE: Which is what? EYRE: All our standard operating procedures and training and development policies, including operational materials, were produced centrally at Harrogate and Bramshill. A key role in writing doctrine for us was to ensure the context and the language was understood within the policing family. This included a wide range of documentation, including standard operating procedures and ACPO documentation concerning critical incidents, national intelligence models, and a variety of other policing literature. Not surprisingly, the response from our department was that the guidelines were not accurate to the policing format. And yet these were meant to be guidelines for UK officers preparing to go into hostile environments. PEAKE: Such as what, for example? EYRE: Primarily, the guidelines were just that. They acted as an awareness-raising document, very military-centric and full of consultancy-speak and descriptions of the likely environments to be encountered. Specific tools and techniques or models referred to, such as the conflict path analysis or risk assessment model, were those that were more relevant to the development world and not UK policing. The language also tended to be very academic in its construction. The net result was a policing agency responsible for national doctrine not being clear on what was written, yet the FCO acknowledged this but proceeded with the publication nevertheless. So in terms of the literature, it really doesn't hold currency with the very service it's meant to be calling on for support and informing. PEAKE: You mean the language and literature of development? EYRE: Of the policing context within the development arena. Ironically, it is used predominantly by the private sector policing companies or retired officers who are now involved in providing policing inputs or offering their services as freelance consultants. The one exception to that of late has been the publication of the new OECD DAC handbook on Security System Reform. I think that this is a most comprehensive and intelligently written practitioner's guidebook, in terms of the way in which it breaks down security and development into its constituent parts within the SSR environment. There have been sister documents and booklets produced by DFID here in the UK, which I also believe are well-written and presented, albeit very development-oriented again. These tend to be the two or three key areas of reference that I am comfortable introducing new policing advisors to on joining the international academy. PEAKE: Thank you-time is weighing on us, so I have a final series of questions to ask you, and that is about amalgamation and vetting. Whenever there are different elements, whether it is a militia unit, another unit, a part of the army, or part of the police that have to work together within a unified police service, then the challenges of creating a unified esprit de corps-is this a facet of police reform that you have dealt with overseas, and I wonder if you can talk me through some of the cases that you may have worked with, about how you've tried to amalgamate and integrate different units within one unified police service. EYRE: I would say that within the area of peace support operations that have involved UK international policing assistance, such as the executive mission in Kosovo and current deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, we as a national training and development agency have never really been engaged by our own government departments from the outset, and I think that fact has influenced the effectiveness of UK policing contributions to a degree. An area that I do know that we have been involved in more effectively and where we looked to align more closely the UK contribution was in the UK bid to take over from the German PAMECA [EU Police Mission to Albania] Commission, which was coming to an end. The UK is clear in its intent to lead on this policing mission as part of an integrated security strategy in Europe to enhance policing professionalism within Albania, and in so doing help them to deal with crime issues being currently imported to the UK (such as drugs and sex trafficking), there at source. Now we've already been working with the German project team with regard to PAMECA 2 and working with the Albanian police. The Albanian service have themselves been undergoing significant reform, bringing many new faces into the policing environment from disparate backgrounds, such as academia, the justice sector, and civil service. This brings with it inherent risks in terms of the lack of policing skills and competencies of that new group, along with the lack of experience at working together as a command team at the executive level. Here we go back to the importance of relationship management, facilitating a better understanding of the relationships between these disparate groups, particularly amongst the key leadership groups. In this instance we work hard at identifying who the key characters are. It's a bit like a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or personality-trait approach. In other words, get to understand the type of person we're dealing with first, and then we will tailor some of our management workshops around them, as you are simply not going to be able to box around them. Until you've done that, you won't have achieved that level of trust so critical to our type of projects; your house is built on a sandbank. On a different tack, the EU work that we have been doing in support of the Iraq police service and their leadership in particular (EUJUST LEX) is an area where we have worked hard to establish an integrated approach between different agencies within a country coming out of conflict. This EU-funded justice and policing project has seen several groups of officers and judges being sent to several European countries to take part in a variety of leadership and investigation programs. To sit and hear the interaction between the judges and police especially in describing that this is the first time that they have ever worked together, being here at Bramshill, was dramatic to say the least. We've run workshops where it has not just been about the content; we've worked very hard at facilitating engagements between them both in social terms as well as within the class, including discussions on establishing more formal lines of communication back in Iraq. An improved integrated governance structure has evolved as a consequence. PEAKE: How have you gone about doing that? EYRE: The starting point was the EU teams working hard on the joint selection process being applied back in Iraq. Therefore receiving the course as a mixed group of policing judges, whereby they had already spent several days previously getting to know one another, was crucial. On the actual program, the trainers would look at cases or scenarios where they would make sure it's not just about the policing reaction to that; they would then go in and explore the legal implications of it, ensuring that police officers were fully engaged during that part of the discussion. Then they'd get the judges to consider how they would respond if it was a police officer and taking into account: what he would have done initially at the scene of a crime, for example. So it's a very simple interaction where we'd change things around. But getting them to do this and challenging one another constructively, with facilitation, provided a quite obvious "aha" moment: "I never knew my police commander would have to do that." To see them interact with one another by the end of the course, senior judge to senior police officer, and by both the European sponsors and FCO colleagues, was a truly profound moment. So again, I can't underestimate the importance of a project management process being applied from the moment a request is received right through to the recommendations, the implementation plans, delivery, evaluations, and concluding reports. All of this in turn hinges on the fundamentals of respect, trust, legitimacy, and professionalism. Ultimately, making a difference to citizen safety within the global context must be a vocational undertaking, if one is to be truly effective. PEAKE: Then on that cheery note and with time pressing, we're going to have to end it there, but thank you very much, Kurt Eyre. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: A7 ______________________________________________________________________ 2 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties