Specialised regional police officials started meeting in Yaounde on March 15, 2016 to examine the draft of a harmonised course by INTERPOL.

Men of the underworld are taking advantage of the phenomenon of globalisation and technological progress to perpetrate crime across national boundaries. Unfortunately, law enforcement efforts to outsmart them face the major challenge of the legal impossibility to also operate across frontiers, hence the need for international police cooperation. The absence of training courses for such cooperation in police training institutions complicates the fight.

Specialised regional police officers and at least five directors of police training schools from various countries of the Central African Sub-region started a two-day meeting yesterday, March 15, 2016, in Yaounde to examine the draft of a harmonised course in International Police Cooperation proposed by the Central African Regional Bureau of the International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL, for police training schools.

Opening the meeting yesterday, INTERPOL’s Regional Bureau Chief and Permanent Secretary of the Central African Police Chiefs’ Organisation, Senior Superintendent of Police Lawrence Tang Enow, urged the participants to make significant and efficient contributions to the blueprint.

After two presentations on the place of training within INTERPOL as well as the organisation and functioning of training institutions at the national level, participants will be presented the four modules of the draft course outline notably, the institutional framework of international police cooperation, domains of international police cooperation, international police cooperation tools and services and lastly, handing over of delinquents and seized property. “Besides sensitising authorities on the importance of international police cooperation, we also want these Directors to know each other and form a network wherein they can exchange best practices,” Tang Enow told the press later.

The meeting which is the first of its kind specialised in international police cooperation ever held in INTERPOL’s Regional Office, falls within the framework of the implementation of recommendations made by the Central African Police Chiefs’ Organisation (CAPCO) as well as part of INTERPOL’s response to the capacity-building needs of member countries.