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.: A29 Interviewee: Andrew Hughes Interviewer: Daniel Scher and Jennifer Widner Date of Interview: 18 July 2008 Location: New York City New York United States Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace & Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties SCHER: My name is Daniel Scher, I'm the Associate Director of the Institutions for Fragile States project and I'm here with Professor Jennifer Widner, the Director of the project, and Police Adviser Andrew Hughes. Adviser Hughes, before we begin, I'd just like to make sure that we've spoken through the informed consent and the legal release and you have an understanding of those documents. HUGHES: Absolutely, you can say that again. SCHER: With your permission, then, I'd like to begin the interview. Before we start talking about policing we'd like to know a little bit more about you. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your background, your position now and your career trajectory that has brought you to this point. HUGHES: Well, I've been a police officer for 31 years. I joined in 1977 a territorial police force in Australia called the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Police which was a small force of around 550. In 1979 the ACT Police amalgamated with the then Commonwealth Police and the Narcotics Bureau from the Australian Customs Service to form the Australian Federal Police (AFP). That opened up-I was a young detective at the time in Canberra which is the national capital as the name suggests, and we policed it in a traditional policing sense. When the AFP, the Federal Police was formed, there was a huge demand for investigators, a lot of senior investigators were taken and detectives were taken from ACT and moved to national task forces on fraud and drugs and other things. Now, that meant that those who were relatively young had to leap into the front and manage investigations on things that historically would have not come my way for a number of years. So we were doing quite major investigations. It was sink or swim and we learned quickly. I went into the national side of the organization in 1983 to Cairns in North Queensland which is a small station-there were only two detectives there and a number of uniformed police-and worked on federal crimes. Then I went to the detective training school. I was promoted there, promoted out again to the National Criminal Investigation Branch which as the name suggests is a national part of the AFP in those days, then promoted back to the detective training school as a faculty head for ACT Law and Police Powers. Then I was transferred back to Cairns in charge of Cairns station. After a few years there I was transferred to London as a liaison officer at the Australian High Commission in London working with the U.K. and European counterparts primarily on organized crime. I was there for two years and then promoted to the Superintendent in charge of all of North Queensland which is a large region in Australia. Then I was promoted as Director or Commander of International Operations and Federal Operations which was an investigative area. So I ran a network of liaison officers around the world as well as peacekeeping. This is where my first introduction to peacekeeping arose because the AFP were then in Cyprus. This was also the start of Timor in 1999 with the first iteration of a series of U.N. interventions, this was the referendum to vote on independence. So it was quite a testing time for all given the events that followed that process. I was then promoted to Assistant Commissioner in charge of all of the operations, the national operations, for the Australian Federal Police. Then I moved to Deputy Chief Police Officer back in the ACT which was where I started it all as a Deputy Chief there, running all of the operational side of the organization. And the AFP continues to police the ACT but in a contractual arrangement with the ACT government. From there I took up the Commissioner of Police in Fiji for three and a half years until the coup of December 2006 which saw my removal by the military government. After, my name came forward for the U.N. Police Adviser's position and while we were waiting for the outcome of that I took over as Chief Police Officer for the Australian Capital Territory for a few months on an interim basis. Then I was successful in this position, and I arrived here in September 2007 on a two-year contract. So that's my history. SCHER: Excellent. HUGHES: As well as that I had Interpol. I was on the Executive Committee of Interpol for two years, which is an elected position. It is a 13-member Executive Committee. That was part-time. You attended three Executive Committee meetings every year and there was some other work that went with that but that was an interesting part of my time when I was in the international side of the AFP. SCHER: Certainly a very wide and varied array of experience within international policing. HUGHES: Yes. SCHER: One of the things I'd be quite interested to know is the types of briefings and information that you received to prepare you for this current position. What was the type of process that you went through to learn what the issues were and what your responsibilities would be? HUGHES: As I said, my exposure to the U.N. goes back to 1999. For three years I managed AFP deployments to the missions. I visited Cyprus. Then as Commissioner of Police for Fiji, the Fiji police were then in Kosovo, in Sudan-sorry, Kosovo, Liberia, and in Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) a Regional Mission, but Security Council endorsed, not a U.N. mission, but Security Council endorsed. I visited Kosovo, I visited Liberia, I visited the U.N. headquarters in New York in a national capacity, as head of a national police agency. So I experienced mission activities in those visits and headquarters here. So that was all very helpful, you were able to conceptualize what all this peacekeeping thing was about. But in terms of briefings and preparations I spoke with the Department of Foreign Affairs, the International Organizations Division of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Obviously I spoke a lot with colleagues who had worked in missions, but as well as that I'd often spoken to them as friends and colleagues so I had gleaned a lot of the challenges they faced and some of the things that they had done. So I had sort of an evolving knowledge of peacekeeping operations. And I think, because U.N. policing has moved now considerably into reform, restructure, rebuilding, that was what I did in Fiji. I also, when I was managing AFP's international component, we also had a law enforcement cooperation program which was several million dollars of funding from government which enabled us to do modest bilateral development with countries globally but primarily in the Asia-Pacific region. So I'd had a lot of reform, restructure, rebuilding work including first hand with Fiji and also in other countries like PNG (Papua New Guinea) and Vanuatu, Solomon Islands. So that side of it I was comfortable with. The actual security aspects of police peacekeeping were things that I'd picked up by visiting and by talking and by reading and generally getting a sense of it. SCHER: I'm sure, though, that there were many things that would have been difficult to prepare for in this job in terms of the crises that you've had to face around the world. What are the types of things that you would have liked to have known before assuming this position? HUGHES: I think, on balance, I think it would have been useful had I worked in a senior police position in a U.N. peacekeeping mission. I say 'on balance' because there is part of me that thinks coming in with fresh eyes was valuable and this is what the USG (Under Secretary-General), Mr. (Jean-Marie) Guˇhenno told me when I won the job, that the fact that I was coming in with fresh eyes and the fact that I was coming in with extensive experience in police reform were all factors that influenced the selection committee to chose me. But having been in the role, I do recognize that, again, on balance, having that experience would have been pretty helpful. SCHER: One of the things you mentioned before we started recording was you thought it would be quite helpful to be able to go back and see what the police adviser's issues of the days were five years ago, ten years ago. HUGHES: Yes. SCHER: In five years' time, if somebody were to be in this position, what are the types of things you would like them to know about the issues that you're facing now? HUGHES: Well we're actually, a lot of what we're doing at the strategic level here in the police division is focused very much on who my successors will be and what organization I will leave them to inherit. Part of that is actually making the police identity within the U.N. system much more clear, much more well known and much better understood by the stakeholders. I also would like to see a concept of U.N. policing as an organization, that we have, rather than just a majority of seconded officers, that we have far more professional posts and that there is a career structure. Someone who wants to become a U.N. police officer can step out of their national organization, can join this U.N. police and then has a career path up to very senior levels, but that within each mission there is a critical core of professional, well-experienced U.N. police officers. How we get there, this is all work we're doing now. We're working on expanding our operational support role here at the Police Division. We hope to get continuing support for that growth over the next twelve months. That will then place us in a position where we can then start arguing for more professional posts rather than just seconded positions and this notion of a professional U.N. police, an international police, with a defined role. So in five years' time, whether we'll get there remains to be seen, but I hope that whoever is there in five years will at least appreciate that we made a very solid effort to get to that point. SCHER: What are the challenges posed by not having enough professional posts at the moment and having a lot of seconded officers? HUGHES: It is the-they come, we've got good people, they get more experience by working here, they get really proficient, understand the business, have great relationships with member countries, police-contributing countries, with the missions, and then after two or three years they walk out the door. So I'm continually getting new people. We're training; that's good in a way, you refresh, and I think we need that, we need an element of that through here. I wouldn't say we just limit to professional posts and not have any seconded officers, I think there needs to be a balance. At the moment we've got precious few. I've got a core of about three or four who hold down P-posts, the rest are seconded officers, so there's not enough. We've got to get that balance right. But member countries are reluctant to fund professional posts, they're more expensive, so I'm led to believe, I don't know how that works, but that's what I'm told. SCHER: Just out of interest, do you have any set-ups to try and capture the sort of knowledge that people build up in the two or three years that they're here so that it's not completely lost? HUGHES: Yes, we do, the policies are set, developed by the staff as they've come through and we have a suite of [military term], of doctrine, but I prefer policies and guidelines for U.N. policing activities in a wide range of things. So that continually evolves, but there are gaps and we're working to fill those gaps. As well as, that, you don't have a situation where everyone walks out the door on Friday afternoon and then a whole fresh batch come in on Monday morning, it's always staggered and staged. We have a core of people who have been here for several years so the knowledge is there. We need to do more to protect that knowledge though, and I think we need to think a more robust database. We discussed this today, and knowledge management needs to be improved. But the project that we're discussing today is a very solid step in that regard where we capture snapshots in time of the critical things. It is there then for perpetuity. SCHER: We certainly hope we can contribute in that respect. HUGHES: I'm sure you are. SCHER: I'd like to if we may talk a bit about the expansion of the Policing Division because I'm sure that poses a number of challenges in terms of recruitment and all these things that we were talking about prior to this conversation. Could you talk a little bit about that? HUGHES: We face the same problems as we do in recruiting for the field. There are a number of distinctions that can be made between military and police in peacekeeping. One of them is: peacekeeping is core business for most militaries in the world now. They train for it when they're not fighting wars. They deploy people, and to progress in your career it seems to me as a military officer, some experience in peacekeeping is not only desirable, it almost seems to be essential. You see the officers with their chests of ribbons and you'll note that a number of them are peacekeeping missions. So it is core business for them; it's not the case for police. Core business for police is their domestic responsibilities and national responsibilities or jurisdictional responsibilities back home. So to draw police from a jurisdiction and to get the best and the brightest, which is what we need to do this complex sort of work, is difficult. Why would a commissioner want to send his best and brightest when he has demands at home? We understand that. So the challenge for recruitment in the field applies equally to recruiting good quality professionals here at headquarters. We do well. We do get quite a number of good applicants for the positions here, but you can always improve. From time to time we haven't made the right choices, but then the field has been a little bit weak on those occasions. So that's the first challenge, tapping into the gene pool to get the right people here. The second thing is, of course, the funding, getting member states, the finance committees and so on, the Fifth Committee (the main committee of the United Nations General Assembly for administrative and budgetary matters), ACABQ (Advisory Committee for Administrative and Budgetary Questions), the C34 Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations onboard, member countries on board, with the need for the growth and within the DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping Operations) to get them to understand the needs. Now we've achieved all of that this year so the ground is now well prepared for us next year to actually put flesh on that or to build the new police division on top of it. We started again that process today, resumed that process today. But we've got to keep the momentum up, we have to market ourselves better. There's still a lack of understanding about what the police do. They still think we are somehow joined at the hip with the military, sort of a boutique outfit that's there and it's nice to have around. But they don't really understand that now we're not just observing, monitoring and reporting. We are into very complex areas of police reform. We're into very complex mandates of executive policing, like in Kosovo and Timor. We're doing very close operational support roles in Liberia and Haiti, where our police are quite front line although they don't have an executive mandate. They're there, standing alongside the national police and in other areas as well. So these are complex tasks. So marketing and making everyone aware of this is an issue for us as well. SCHER: There are a couple of things I'd like to pick up on there. When you say you're marketing yourselves trying to do that. Who are you speaking to? How are you going about this process? HUGHES: We had...my predecessor introduced the initiative of a U.N. Policing Magazine, a simple process but a very important one. We had a fellow we engaged, Brian Hansford, a very well qualified and experienced journalist from Wales. Unfortunately we weren't able to regularize his post and he left for another U.N. organization. But we just had approval for a nine-month attachment and we're in the process of recruiting coincidentally an Australia media expert who has lived and worked in Europe most of her professional career, including Russia. She is coming on board and she will be picking that up. Other things we're doing are speaking to meetings of international police leaders like Interpol General Assembly. I addressed them last November in Marrakech explaining the role of U.N. police, the need for quality officers, the fact that it is a win-win situation because I'll send them back much more experienced, much more exposed officers than when they arrive in the mission. I'm going to be talking to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego, particularly the international division later this year, I think it is in November again. So we look for all those opportunities to be able to promote what we're doing internally, you know, there are obviously a lot of meetings we attend where we showcase what we're about. SCHER: I'd be interested also to know more about the actual recruitment procedure. This sounds like a massively complex thing where you're trying to identify key people in national police forces literally around the world who would perform well in a U.N. policing mission. Could you maybe talk me through the process, how you go about identifying and selecting-? HUGHES: You mean field recruitment? SCHER: Field recruitment, yes. HUGHES: When the Security Council mandates a mission, there's a resolution and a mandate is there. It normally articulates the number of police, individual officers and where appropriate FPUs, formed police units. Notes Verbales are circulated to the permanent missions here in New York inviting contributions of police. Then we receive correspondence back diplomatically saying yes, country X, we're prepared to provide X number of police. We then seek the P11, the application form that is a generic U.N. job profile. There are certain criteria. They have to have had a minimum of five years policing experience, they must speak the mission language. If invited we send a team in to do the standard assessment test, the SAT test which simply checks driving ability, written and oral language ability and, if it is an armed mission, shooting proficiency. That's not enough. That's too basic, we can talk about that in a minute. If all of those things come out okay and there are no integrity issues, we have to have an undertaking that they're not subject to any internal investigations or criminal matters or corruption or anything of that like nature. Then they're accepted as part of the contingent. So they're deployed as individual officers. Formed police units are different. Formed police units deploy as a contingent. We send officers to check the equipment and then the formed police unit deploys. SCHER: And, you said that's not enough..? HUGHES: No, the shooting, driving, writing, talking, is just-when you look at the mandates we're given. As I said about capacity building, executive policing, there's far more to it than that. And in Darfur we went down the path of interviewing individual officers but we're looking at recruiting 3,500 individual officers, the task was too big and it was artificially slowing things down. But through coordinating bilateral arrangements, most of the police deploying to Darfur will have undergone pre-deployment training either within their home country or where countries aren't in a position to be able to offer that training, through arrangements that we're coordinating between donors and recipients in places like the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Center in Ghana and so on. I know some Fijian police officers were trained there recently before they deployed to Darfur because Fiji doesn't have that capacity. So increasingly we're looking at pre-deployment training. We're not there yet but we're on the path. SCHER: What are the types of things that are involved in pre-deployment training? HUGHES: Some of it is specific to the mission as in the case with the Darfur training. They learn a little bit of the culture, a little bit about the history of the conflict and the nature of the work they're doing and so on, and some of the local laws and customs, etc. But there are generic components about being a peacekeeper. This links back to some other important work we're about to start which is about what it means to be a U.N. police officer. Now we have 97 countries contributing police. There are more than 97 policing models because some of those are federal systems, so we draw state, federal or provincial, and national police from within a country's contingent, so there are over 100, probably 150 different policing methodologies and styles out there. Some of them are similar, some of them you can block saying this is the British model, these are more like the American model, these are the French model, but they're all different. So what does it mean when you put the blue beret on essentially, what do we expect? Now the guidance material for that is thin, but it is there. We're looking at things like General Assembly resolutions, human rights, gender mainstreaming. We look at reports of committees, special committees, like the C34. We look at Secretary-General's policy statements, guidance notes. What emerges when you look at all of that material is a democratic policing model. A democratic policing model, there's a lot of authoritative work on that but to me as a practitioner, that means an open, transparent, accountable, fair, responsive, representative organization which sees itself as being part of the community and the community as part of the police. That sort of a concept, very open and accountable, highly accountable, high integrity, professional. That's sort of the model. Now we're going to start work on actually formalizing that so it will be the International Handbook on Policing. That will be in consultation with other major providers of international police, primarily the EU (European Union), the AU (African Union), but also some other regional bodies will be consulted on this. We'll have this thing so before anyone contemplates throwing their hand up they must meet certain criteria, they must understand. Most of our countries do not have democratic policing models in their own environment. A lot of them are authoritarian; some of them extremely authoritarian and they're contributing peacekeepers. If we don't do this, the danger is, as you know, if you don't train people and give them an understanding of what it is to be a U.N. police officer, in the absence of nothing, they will default to their national policing style. And in many cases that is not appropriate for the U.N. So without naming names, and name and shame, I think we all know some examples of who we're talking about. That's not acceptable. So individual officers must have a common understanding of what it means to put the blue beret on, what we expect. Now the EU is looking at us for some leadership in this regard and we want some input from them. So it becomes-if you go on an EU policing mission for a couple of years and then a few years later you go on a U.N. mission, it will all be very similar, or in fact the same. SCHER: Professor, would you like to weigh in on this? WIDNER: I'd be very interested in exploring a bit more your past work in Fiji and Timor and then perhaps bringing that forward to how it has shaped your views in your role today. Perhaps you could explain a bit more to the people listening what the mandate or mission was in Fiji, in particular? HUGHES: What happened there, there was a coup in Fiji in May of 2000, a civilian coup but with military assistance from a rouge outfit called the Counter Revolutionary Warfare group, CRW. They assisted George Speight and some other shadowy characters to overthrow the (Mahendra) Chaudhry Labour government by force, they stormed Parliament. The military, the body of the Republic of Fiji military forces led by Commander (Josaia Voreqe) Frank Bainimarama was able after, I think it was over two months of this kidnap hostage situation, they were able to eventually resolve it. They installed an interim government and that interim government was eventually elected. The decision was made that because they had just come out of a coup, there were some aspersions that the Commissioner at the time, the Police Commissioner was in some way complicit with the coup. There was an independent inquiry but it didn't find enough evidence to proceed, but the shadow of these allegations lingered. It was felt at this particular time in Fiji's development or evolution, that an expatriate commissioner would be the way to go. Being a Commonwealth country, they approached the Commonwealth representatives in Fiji in Suva [capital and largest city in Fiji], the Brits, the New Zealanders and the Australians. After a process in Australia, my name went forward. I was flown to Fiji, interviewed by the Constitutional Officers Commission, which is the appointing authority for certain statutory office holders including the police commissioner, and I got the job. Now, I was a member of the AFP, I was seconded to the government of Fiji. AUSAID, the Australian Aid agency, topped up the local salary to the equivalent of an Australian commissioner and weighed in with other assistance like housing and so on. So I went there, but, you know, I put on the Fijian police uniform, I took the oath of office from the Chief Justice and was a member of the National Security Council for a short time when I arrived, which was rather unusual because I was top secret cleared in Australia, so there were all these sorts of anomalies. But common sense, we worked through that. And I was the Commissioner of the Fiji Police for three and a half years. Part of my responsibilities there, aside from managing the force of nearly 4,200, was to reform and rebuild and modernize the Fiji police. They had suffered, they were under-resourced for... forever, basically, and they needed to improve quickly. So with donor assistance, bilateral donor assistance, going to government with solid cases, we were able to increase the budget. We increased the size by 800. We were able to get better vehicles and better systems in place, more IT, tape recording of interviews. There were 42 major projects that we counted that we were running of reform and quite wide ranging. Things were really happening, it was an exciting time to be there and I was working my senior executives very hard but they were relishing it because they had been neglected for so long. They really rose to the occasion and we were starting to make differences. Public opinion soared. We had 84% of respondents in one poll respond that they felt the police were doing a better job then than twelve months ago. This was earlier when we started our reforms. At one point I had a 94% popularity rating, which I think is too high. I started to question whether I was doing my job properly. That was a bit too high. But all of that was very encouraging I suppose, and we won the Fiji Business Encouragement Award. The next year, which was my last year there, we actually won the excellence award for the public sector in Fiji, in terms of reform and so on. And there were only three of us, out of 38 departments I think there were, that won that. So that was a great achievement for the Fiji police. So everything was tracking in the right direction. Public confidence was growing, the crime rate was dropping and everything was going well. While all that was happening we were managing the next coup, which was the military coup that happened in December '06. So it became rule of law versus rule of the gun. That was a very testing time, the last twelve months were very, very testing but we held our line and we nearly prevented it. We very nearly stopped that coup from happening. We had charges against the commander and most of his senior officers for sedition, for a range of offenses around the unlawful removal of 7-1/2 tons of ammunition from the wharf of Suva. But I couldn't lay a finger on him because he always had 100, around 100 at times, body guards, military, so we couldn't actually arrest him. There was an opportunity when he was overseas, I won't name the country, but even though there were offenses in that country they wouldn't arrest so he came back to Fiji. There was only one of us going home. He went home and committed the coup. We all knew he was going to do it and he did it. It was untenable for me to go back; I was going to be arrested upon arrival. And I know my people would have put themselves at risk to protect me even though I [indecipherable] telling them not to, I know they would have, and they would have gotten hurt. And as an expatriate you have to know when to bow out, you become part of the problem, not part of the solution. In fact three of the nine demands he was making of the government were about me. So I was becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. And I felt as well that any solution to this was going to be an indigenous one, not something that an outsider, an Australian could fix. It was very much an indigenous problem. And I had advice from Canberra that it wouldn't be a good idea to go back, so I didn't. And that was the end of that. WIDNER: Police chiefs running forces in many other parts of the world would love to know the secrets of success in the early part of your period in Fiji. One of the things you focused on was development of a training institute and training programs? HUGHES: Yes, that was part of it, a new batch of fresh-faced, young, bright, well-educated, often new breed of police. But there are some very quick things you can do. The optics are very important; using the media is very important. I was able to project a very positive, very fresh, confident style. We had a uniform committee. They got rid of this...the Fiji police has an iconic uniform, but it's a dress uniform, it's a jagged-edge sulu, which is like a dress and a dark top. And they look very smart in it, but it's not a very efficient operational uniform, though it looks great on parades and ceremonial occasions, it looks fantastic. So I put to the committee: design a uniform. They did, they came up with one that looked like an Australian uniform but nevertheless it also looks like a lot of other police uniforms. Blue, shoulder flashes, light blue shirt, dark blue pants, dark blue skirt for the ladies, beret. They kept parts of their traditional thing as well. That had a huge impact. People, when they see police in different uniforms, looking smart, the police feel good about themselves, they're in this smart uniform. The public sees a change. They see a commissioner on the TV who is confident, talking about the things that were annoying the public about lack of discipline. We doubled the size of the professional standard unit and I held people accountable. If someone did the wrong thing, they were charged, even senior officers. And all this had a huge impact. The media became very positive. So it starts to fuel itself. They report on the popularity surveys that are done and all that and that generates its own momentum. So my advice would be don't overlook the small things. You may think, oh, what's a uniform? You know, so what the commissioner can talk well on TV? These are very important, very important, to project that positive image. WIDNER: It appears from the outset of this as though you made a big investment in developing the information resources within the police service, both increasing the ability of people to bring complaints, but also increasing your ability to monitor what was taking place within the services. Could you describe...? HUGHES: Yes, certainly, every complaint was logged and dealt with, nothing was swept under the carpet. I had a commissioner's- I forget the term, it wasn't a task force, because that was looking at investigating the coup in 2000- but there was a commissioner's team led by hand-picked, competent investigators, who proactively- I would send out. There's a drink in Fiji called Kava, which is made from a root of a ginger-type plant which is a mild narcotic. And when you drink it-it's a traditional drink, it's a drink of the chiefs but it has become widely available and quite abused-it has a numbing effect. They were drinking it in police stations and police posts. On an argument that, well, this is traditional, this is custom. It's not tradition, it's not custom, because I looked into it and the history is that it is a drink for the chiefs, not for the common people but it has become common. But it does dull the mind. It is like having a bar in a western police station. You just don't do that. You don't go and sidle up to the bar and have a couple of whiskeys and go out on patrol, you just don't do that. It was making them-they weren't responsive, they were lazy, lethargic in many places, so we cut it out. Zero. No Kava in police stations. If you want to go home and drink Kava that's up to you, but not in the police station, not on duty. Unless it is for traditional reasons. So if they're going to a village and the chief wants to do a traditional welcome, yes, of course, we'll have a couple of bowls of Kava; that's understood and that was accepted, but not just routinely sitting around the slush bowl and drinking all night. So we cut that out and I had my team going around to enforce it. There was a lot of positive hype about that, you know, cleaning it up. People saying "thank goodness, because we'd ring the police station and no one would show because they're all drinking Kava around the back." So we cut all that out. I drove home the notion to my leadership about setting the example and continually reinforced it, and they rose to the challenge. WIDNER: The audit or spot-check system is something that I know a number of police services and others have entertained as a possibility. The public often likes them, the police themselves may not, but you won acceptance of this. What would you say was the secret of that success? HUGHES: What I said is, look, if we're going to become a professional-if you want a pay raise, you're going to have to professionalize. You can't expect me to go and state the case to government for pay raise, for more equipment, newer cars, if you're not fulfilling your end of the deal. That's the deal we have to strike here. When I moved around the police stations and the districts and so on, that was a constant message. A majority of them got it and they wanted to become professional, they wanted to feel proud of themselves, they wanted to be part of this new, reinvigorated organization. It wasn't a hard message to sell. They also realized that they were underpaid and they needed the money. So it was either lift your game or get out. And I explained to them what I was going to do, I was going to check and we were going to continually monitor this. So there was an acceptance, that, OK, we understand where he's coming from. And they did get a pay raise, they got a significant pay raise. WIDNER: When you put that system in place, did you speak mainly with the police service leaders, the managers around you, or did you address the whole force? HUGHES: Both. I'd have management meetings and I would also have as many officers as I could turn up. They have what they call a bure which is a meeting place which again is a traditional way of doing it, but that's how they operate. So you bring them into the police station bure, and then address them, take questions, hear their grievances, hear their concerns and action them. If I say I'm going to do it, I have my staff officer there and I say make a note of that. When we get back to headquarters two days later or whatever it may happen to be, we'd go through the list and we'd make sure that they were done. So when I went back there, they'd know, I'd ask them, "have they fixed that problem you had with whatever it was?" If it wasn't fixed, I would start to kick someone until it was fixed. WIDNER: You also developed a newsletter or a magazine within the service? HUGHES: Yes, we had a web site, and the magazine went out, a sort of breezy sort of magazine, it was devoured by them. They loved it-to hear about sporting successes and individual achievements. But we also had contributions from peacekeeping as well, from the peacekeepers in the field, there'd be articles. We had one of the peacekeepers from Liberia writing for one of the major daily newspapers. Every Saturday morning there was a feature article on what happened that week. So the police peacekeeping was promoted within Fiji. WIDNER: How did you deal with the press, the regular newspapers? Did you hold press conferences? HUGHES: Yes. WIDNER: And that was how they began to know about-? HUGHES: I made myself available. I can probably count on one hand over 3-1/2 years when I was unable to talk to the media. And it was either unable because it was sensitive and I didn't want to try to come across as trying to make some sort of line up. If I couldn't speak on an issue then I'd say, "Look, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you." It was very rare. But if there was an issues-driven media conference, I'd call it, explain what it was about, and they would turn up in numbers. Then there would be a break. After those I'd usually say "can I see you afterwards?" They'd come and see me one-on-one and talk about whatever it is they wanted. But I hope and I'm confident I did have the reputation for being open and available, and approachable. And if I said something they could reliably say "The commissioner said it, so it's got to be right." I'd never, never intentionally deceive them, and I wouldn't because trust is a very, very fragile thing with the media. They're always thinking you're trying to push an agenda or hide something. If I was trying to conceal something, I wouldn't talk to them, they'd have to understand that. There are certain operational things that are sensitive. Can't divulge it yet. WIDNER: Were there any other efforts to reform what police were doing on the street with the citizenry at any time? One of the examples we've had in another conversation is new categories of police activity were opened up to bring the public on board to make them feel as though the police were actually doing something on their behalf. Were there any changes? HUGHES: Yes, one of the major projects was community policing and getting engaged with the community much more than we were in the past. Other things like the more representative nature of the force. When I arrived 10% of the force was female, we were able to get that up to 18.6% and our goal was 25%. I had women in senior front-line operational roles for the first time in the history of the force. So the image of the force became, I'd say 'softer' but it's not the right term, but you know what I mean, it wasn't such a macho, male-dominated, rugby thing that it was when I arrived. It became much more representative of the community. Yes, rugby, we're good at rugby, we beat the military for this annual trophy, it's great. We did that two years in a row. So the sporting, I encouraged the sporting thing. But the sporting thing was not only that the health wasn't good, their well-being was bad because they drank too much Kava and they ate too much, and bad food. But to reintroduce a sporting culture where they were encouraged to play, even if they were more mature officers, to do something. A walk, or to take some physical activity, and give them time off to do it. But it was also about then, if they were footballers or they were soccer players or volleyball players, in a community policing program to go work with the youths that were unemployed, or the school kids to build the confidence and trust. We brought in the Police Citizens Youth Club (PCYC) concept, which was an Australian idea. We introduced that and it took off like wildfire. We ended up with this huge building that they were able to raise money for and donors came in and funded this massive complex in what was one of the most crime-prone areas in Suva. And for a period of several months there was not one crime apart from domestic violence. There were no robberies; the youths were all engaged in it. They were happy. They had a car wash set up. They got some brush cutters for them, you know, and they were doing gardening for the council and getting paid and some of the money was going to the PCYC. It was a real success story, got a lot of international media attention. So these community policing projects are essential to engage with the community. WIDNER: Were there also boards in which citizens sat with police? HUGHES: Yes, I can't take credit for that; that was in existence before I got there. They call them Crime Prevention Committees. These were neighborhood based and they would assist the police and sometimes go on joint patrols with the police. They would raise funds so that the police could have torches and paint their police stations and things, and buy them limited, modest equipment to help in the office. They were good. There were dozens of those. WIDNER: They haven't worked everywhere, and people are sometimes weary of them... HUGHES: Look, what works in Fiji may not work anywhere else because you have to take into account the cultural setting, the context in which you're operating, what works, what won't work. Fijians are very communal people, and family is very important. The sense of belonging is really critical to them. They love to put the uniform on because they belong to something, a tribal sort of context. You know what I mean? I'm not being derogatory, I think it is a very positive thing; I wish more countries had that. If I could say it, I think the United States is a very individualistic society, so you'd have to take a different approach in a society like this. You know, that wouldn't work. A lot of the places where you have peacekeeping missions have quite complex and different-Sudan and Darfur, they're different from Fiji. So you've got to look at it, and understand the culture, what are the things that turn them on and what are the things that turn them off and focus on the things that work. WIDNER: Were there any other ingredients of success there that you'd like to highlight for people working in other parts of the world? HUGHES: Marrying in- I think the real trick is just building on what I said just then about taking in local culture. It is- don't throw away the good things about a local police force just because they're different, just because they're something that you have not seen before. Really, you need to go in with an open mind, bring ideas in, sure, everyone expects that, that's why you're paid to do your job, but be open as well and remember there are always lots of ways to address a problem. Just because you're the commissioner doesn't mean that your idea is necessarily better than anyone else's. So explore all options. And in many cases you can do a hybrid solution where you think "well that's a good idea, but this is a good idea, so let's sort of meld them together" and come up with something quite new and innovative for that local setting. So I think just keeping an open mind and being committed 100% to it. That will, the energy you have will infect others. WIDNER: Earlier in our conversation about your current role you spoke about the variety of ways in which U.N. police are now involved in different parts of the world and increasingly that is a rehabilitation, reform role in many places. How did your experience in Fiji or your experience in Timor shape the way you are going at those issues within the U.N. now? HUGHES: I just want to clarify that I'd not actually worked in Timor. I managed contingents, Australia contingents through there, and I've just completed an expert review, or led an expert team in, on police reform but, so really my time with Fiji and the AFP is where this reform experience has come. But in answer to your question about the Fiji part, it has been invaluable to understand what reform is all about. When I came they were under-resourced, under-paid, demoralized, and traumatized. They were traumatized over the coup. I had to get counselors in and all sorts of things going on. It was not dysfunctional; it was functional, but not very. So I think that's the sort of general synopsis that could apply to a lot of the police forces in post conflict environments in which we operate. So understanding how to help the broken biscuits in that thing and become whole biscuits again is pretty good experience and I'm happy to share that with others when I visit the various missions. But again, I stress, I don't think that everything that we did in Fiji would apply everywhere. But there are some things, and there are some generic approaches which have widespread application and utility. WIDNER: People who play equivalent roles in many parts of the world also face the challenges that you did in Fiji that there are often political organizations in the wings, maybe security groups that aren't recognized as official security groups or military or other organizations that would like to take power. You suggested that the police were able to hold this off for some time. HUGHES: Oh,yes. WIDNER: What enabled the police services to do that? Was it a matter of simply policing arms shipments and other kinds of things more rigorously? What steps could a police force take in that kind of setting? HUGHES: I think the overarching thing is the rule of law, that's our job, is to enforce the law. To all of these conflicts there is a legal-in the system, you know, you're not allowed to overthrow a government. There are very few countries that have laws that say it's okay to overthrow a government. Normally governments enact things to protect themselves. So you'll find something there, whether its treason or treasonable offenses or sedition or conspiracy or inchoate types of offenses- to conduct a major spoiling operation, whether it is a rebel group, militias or whether it is a political group taking a more militant role, they will have to do some overt acts that break the law somewhere along the line whether it is amassing weapons, whether it is having meetings without a permit, anything really. Getting finances they're not declaring, abusing the finance system-there's always going to be something you'll find to hang your hook in, and that's what you need to do. You need to then investigate that, present the brief of evidence to the prosecuting authorities and hopefully if they are independent and performing properly they will agree that offenses have been committed and arrest warrants can be issued. That's sensitive, but- with President (Omar al-) Bashir, there has been an impact from the ICC (International Criminal Court) decision. I won't go into-obviously I'm constrained from talking too much about the politics of all that, but, people listen. When there is an arrest warrant for you, whether it is for committing a crime locally or doing something more serious, human nature is such that it is going to have some impact on you. It certainly did in Fiji. The fact that we were- and I was saying I could arrest him but I can't get near him, and his senior team. So it did slow them down, it did force them to re-think strategy. It wasn't a clear run to do this, they had to be careful and they had to continually look over their shoulder. Ultimately it could have stopped it. If he had been arrested overseas then the head of the snake would have been cut off and the rest would have died, I'm confident of that, but it wasn't to be. So I think if we get to that point, if we have these major spoilers, post-conflict setting, or a pre-conflict setting, by enforcing the rule of law you do create that opportunity to prevent it, but certainly the opportunity to make them think twice, to make them continually reassess and be nervous about it. This is not a straightforward run at the touch line. SCHER: I actually had a question, just to pull it back a bit. I understand that when you were in Fiji you were involved in pursuing and attempting to bring people to justice for events with the coup of 2000 and I was wondering how that worked, because on the one hand you were undertaking this major modernization and reform of operation and you also engaged in this very sensitive and, I would imagine, difficult work of trying to address past crimes. Would you mind talking a little bit about that? HUGHES: Not at all. No, we did. Look, you know, you've got to be able to walk and chew gum in this business. It was a matter of keeping a number of balls in the air. I had a commissioner's task force set up that operated in a secure environment; they were hand-picked, good investigators, well led by a solid, strong Fijian Assistant Commissioner. They reported to me. We ended up charging the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, a number of cabinet ministers, a number of senior public servants, a number of police officers, senior police officers and other members of the public. So we did it, we applied the law. People wanted to know what happened in 2000. I was under a lot of pressure from the opposition who were the victims of it, plus the members of the public through the media, about what happened. They wanted to know what happened. So by pursuing again the justice approach to it we were able to divulge through the courts and the media reporting of the trials and so on a lot of what actually happened. That was part of the healing process for Fiji. You know, talked about reconciliation- the government wanted reconciliation, they wanted to leap to reconciliation. My view was yes, we all want reconciliation, but you won't have reconciliation until you have understanding. From understanding you then have acceptance. Acceptance, reconciliation. You can't just go from "we don't know what the hell happened, it was a terrible traumatic thing and I feel terribly traumatized" to "I'm just going to reconcile." There are a number of steps in the middle. So this was part of that: understanding, accepting, and then reconciling. That was how I saw it. SCHER: I had another very specific question. I believe it is called the Police Critical Response Unit? HUGHES: Police Tactical Response, PTR. SCHER: I understand that when Bainimarama took over, he tried to disarm or disband them. HUGHES: He did. SCHER: I was wondering about the story behind that. HUGHES: To be honest, I didn't think it was going to be as controversial as it turned out to be. This was a group of-they had what they called the Police Mobile Unit. They were mainly about civil disorder. They'd roll them out if there was a demonstration; they did an okay job. But we were confronted by a range of things: they had no search and rescue capability, they had no water police underwater search and rescue capability. They had no serious armed offender resolution capability and we were getting hit by armed robberies, some of them were with weapons. Some of them shots were fired, they shot up a bank in one town and then they shot at police as they were fleeing, just like a Hollywood movie. And our response was inadequate. So I recognized a need, they had to have the capability to do all of these things. Now we were too small to have a SWAT team dedicated and a dive team and a water police and all that sort of stuff. So we thought "well, we'll have a tactical group," a lot of this would be multi-skilled. So they'd all be able to do civil disorder, some of them would be able to do armed offenders-those who were good, reliable officers who knew how to handle a weapon and could shoot straight, the basics, and knew when to shoot, more importantly, and when not too, even more important. So we set that up. We had water police. We were able to get, I was able to buy us a big, beautiful police launch from New South Wales police in Australia, ex-Olympics from 2000, and the dive team. So this was like a group of men- some women, but not enough. They were physically fit and specially trained. There was a sense that I got that they were becoming elite. They were designing their own uniform and badges and stuff so what I would do is insist that they do school crossings in the morning to help school kids cross major roads, to go out and do community policing patrols with the general police around the stations to breakdown this elitist thing. Because I told them, "You're a member of the Fiji police, you happen to be in a specialist squad, but you're first and foremost-." Like me, and I'd do it too. I mean, not the kids bit but I'd go around on patrol to show them if I can do it, you can do it. So I'd go on night shift and do all sorts of stuff. Lead by example. We managed it that way. And they were given twenty Heckler & Koch submachine guns for the armed-offender resolution group, just twenty, and some Glock pistols, we got a hundred Glock pistols. Some of those went to Kosovo where we had a contingent of police; 30 of them went to Kosovo, 70 stayed behind. So where there was an armed offender situation we could respond with an armed response. These Heckler & Koch are a tactical weapon used by many SWAT teams around the world. They're short-range, low velocity. A military weapon, you fire it, your lethal shot can be a mile plus. These are not like that. These are for urban, close confines, short barrel but they can do automatic fire, but they won't go a mile. Your killing range is a couple hundred meters I think. So it is a police tactical weapon. Now the military became really agitated about this because they see themselves--obviously, because they were going to do a coup-as being the sole armed instrument in Fiji and no one else was to have arms. So they became-totally out of proportion. We went and spoke to them, we briefed them on it, we invited them to come and have a look, they wouldn't come. But I briefed them on it. They admitted they were paranoid about it. I told them "look, there's nothing to be paranoid about, this is a police function, we aren't going to get involved in your business. You're going to fight the enemy whoever they happen to be, you do that. But we'll deal with crime." But anyway, in the end, as you rightly point out, when they took over they went straight to the armory, took all the guns and disbanded the tactical response team. It has been reformed as the old mobile team which is just about civil disorder and stuff, but it is nowhere near the level that we were getting. We were getting overseas training. I sent guys overseas, we had instructors come to Fiji. They took over the close protection duties for the Prime Minister and other visiting heads of state. They did Princess Anne, a number of prime ministers, and the president of China who visited Fiji. They were close protection for those, armed close protection. So they were a professional group. SCHER: Those were the key questions I had. WIDNER: I don't know how comfortable you feel talking about this, but I wonder if you would talk a little bit about the support role that the U.N. is playing in places like Haiti, or particularly challenging roles. I wonder if you could outline the kinds of challenges that you face in those settings as opposed to the Darfur peacekeeping context, as opposed to the reform and rehabilitation support that you're providing? HUGHES: In a number of our missions we have a dual role, operation support and reform, or in the case of Timor and Kosovo, it has been interim law enforcement and reform. So these are quite different tasks. Now, when we get our U.N. police arriving, these are what I describe as the general, off-the-shelf, utility police officers, that come, probably very good in their home environment, experience of a minimum of five years, but that doesn't mean that they can pass that knowledge on and do reform and design a whole reform plan for a police force. This is complex, specialist work. So I think the way we're recruiting our UNPOLs (United Nations Police) has to be revisited. I think we need to have professional posts in the field that are experts in this rather than just relying on the bunches of UNPOLs coming in, that hopefully someone in that group has got some experience in this or has some ability in this area. The operation support side we generally do well, because, as I said, there is a lot of familiarity with that side of it, but the reform area is where we struggle. I visited Timor, as I said, looked at the police there. That was an area where we struggled. I went to Haiti, the operation support work is good, but we're struggling in some areas on the reform because of that, we have these generic, off-the-shelf police officers that turn up. We need to be more specific in certain skill sets that we need in the missions. Getting that mix right is going to be the challenge for us as we move more and more into this style of work. WIDNER: This need not be part of the tape, but I'm very curious, too. The term of your office is two years. That seems scarcely enough time to come up to speed and then do anything to have an impact... HUGHES: It's been ten months, it seems like ten minutes. Well, it's two years and then I think unless you threaten to kidnap the Secretary-General you actually get a third year. I'm not sure whether the Australian government would agree to that, whether my home force would agree to that or my wife would agree to that, but it is two years minimum and often it's three. Neither of my two predecessors went for the third year. So I don't know, because there are a lot of demands on it and I've got a career back home that I've got to sort of keep an eye on as well. But the maximum you can do as a seconded officer is four years, you can't go beyond that, that's the rules. And it's very rare that we're off for four years. WIDNER: But it places a great premium on the information system of the U.N. in order to minimize that time required to-. HUGHES: I'm fortunate that we have a deputy now, Ann-Marie Orler from Sweden. She has recently arrived-terrific, great lady, very experienced, but I think, in time, consideration should be given to professionalizing that post so that there is continuity in the deputy position. You can second police advisers through rotation, from time to time, but I think there needs to be, the deputy should be a permanent position. WIDNER: Thank you, I am mindful of your time. It would be wonderful at some later date to be able to come back and speak further, but this is a great beginning. HUGHES: Certainly, I'm delighted to help. WIDNER: Thank you very, very much. HUGHES: It is a pleasure. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Policing Oral History Program Interview number: A29 ______________________________________________________________________ 17 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