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.