Safer communities together
19th July 2010 by Andrew Matheson, Manila | 1 Comment
I was down in the remote island province of Dinagat in Mindanao recently, to catch up with two boys in blue from New Zealand. It was good to see our police officers helping their Philippine counterparts to sharpen skills in community policing and criminal investigation.
New Zealand is involved with the Philippine National Police, or the PNP as it’s universally known, to help transform it into a modern police force that can better contribute to building safer communities.
Philippine police face different challenges from their Kiwi colleagues
Philippine police face very different issues from the things that cross the desk of the average Kiwi cop. Two violent insurgencies (with some links to regional terrorist groups), a high number of extra-judicial killings, and a reputation for corruption in the country, for starters.
Dealing with these challenges requires a better resourced police force that enjoys more public confidence, and bringing about that change starts with the basic building blocks of community policing and criminal investigation. This is where New Zealand police trainers come in.
New Zealand is involved with a training initiative called the ‘model police station project’. It’s run by the PNP and the International Criminal Investigation Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), which is part of the US Department of Justice. It’s great being able to plug into the organisational strength of ICITAP — it has designed the training programme, and manages the planning and logistics. New Zealand chips in with trainers for some of the project components. We can lend our expertise, even though we don’t have the capacity to run the programme. It’s a win-win.
I travelled to Dinagat with the country director for ICITAP in the Philippines, Richard Miller. Like me, Richard was impressed with the commitment of the provincial police chief to the model police station project, and the enthusiasm of those on the course.
Don’t be misled by the terms ‘model police station’ and ‘community policing’, though. This training deals with interviewing, interrogation and basic crime scene work, but it also deals with more hard-edge issues such as people-trafficking and terrorism.
The model police station project is just part of the PNP’s ‘integrated transformation program’. The current chief of the Philippine National Police, Jesus Verzosa, is a strong advocate of the model police station work. He was charged with setting up the integrated transformation program when he was deputy chief, and now as the head of the force he sees the model police station project as one of the key elements in developing this country’s police force.
Philippine and New Zealand trainers working together
I’ve discussed the transformation of the PNP with Chief Verzosa, and I’ve been impressed with his commitment to radically improving the force’s professionalism and capabilities. The PNP is less than 20 years old as a civilian force, as it used to be an agency within the military. Now is a good time to stay engaged with the PNP, as staff with a wholly civilian background start moving into senior positions. New Zealand and the US are now training the trainers, so the model police station project can be operated by the PNP and rolled out to the more than 100,000 staff in the force.
As the head of the New Zealand Police remarked: “The world gets smaller day by day. Keeping good relationships with our neighbours and helping to strengthen their police is a sensible and important part of looking after our patch”.
We can help build safer communities, together.
Great to see this project continue to develop past the pilot, Andrew. There is a strong conceptual link between building human rights/responsibilities capacity and capability in communities, as is one of the focuses of the bilateral Human Rights Community Development project (between the NZ and Philippines Human Rights Commissions), and the PNP Model Police Station Project. That is, it is the experience of the HRCD Project that where there is an active MPS it is more likely that the PNP will acknowledge its human rights obligations to the community’s vulnerable groups.
Great Blog!!