Pubdate: Wed, 27 Mar 2002
Source: Richmond Review, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Richmond Public Library
Contact:  http://www.richmondreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/704
Author: Martin van den Hemel

COMMUNITY POLICING GOES GLOBAL

Law enforcement officials and politicians from more than a dozen 
Central-American nations were in Richmond last week to learn about 
community policing.

This was just the latest sign that Richmond's grassroots policing program 
is garnering international respect as a model for others to follow. The 
program puts police officers in closer contact with neighbourhood residents 
and encourages them to search out and solve problems at their roots.

Officials from Guatemala, Grenada, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, Suriname, 
Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Bahamas, Barbados, 
Antigua and Jamaica attended several days of seminars last week, learning 
about how the local community policing program was established and its 
successes.

The participants are part of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control 
Commission, which meets twice a year and discusses all aspects of the 
illicit drug problem.

Richmond's community policing program has also caught the attention of the 
officer in charge of the RCMP's international training program, which is 
contracted by international agencies to help Third World countries develop. 
As a result, Richmond's finest may be asked to go to Eastern Europe to talk 
about the local program and how to establish one just like it.

RCMP Cpl. Davis Wendell said the intent behind the trip is to facilitate 
workshops and to teach the application of community policing in urban centres.

A major issue in some lesser developed countries is the lack of trust for 
the police and that's something that needs to be overcome, he said.

The recent national and international attention on community policing has 
been a huge feather in the cap for Richmond, he said.
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