When Sgt. Rabih Abdallah was posted as the liaison officer (LO) in Rabat, Morocco, his work involved travelling through his area of responsibility (AOR), which consisted of 25 countries.
What he noticed in the West and Central African countries was that the policing agencies lacked funding, training and basic equipment.
"The tough part is describing it because when I say the word 'basic,' everyone in Canada has a certain idea of what basic is," says Abdallah. "But often that idea is still 100 per cent better than reality."
Giving back
So Abdallah looked into what he could offer the countries he works with, which brought him to reach out to the RCMP's Capacity Building Program.
Part of the Federal and International Special Services, the Capacity Building Program is a centralized unit that manages and co-ordinates international capacity-building projects. They also work on identifying regions and agencies that can benefit from projects that in turn support the RCMP's priorities.
Projects range from mentoring and training to providing equipment. Each project is meant to help foreign law enforcement agencies enhance the skills and knowledge they need to address transnational crime and terrorism, with a focus on the RCMP's strategic priorities.
"It's an excellent tool for LOs to offer something to foreign agencies in return for their contributions to what we need from that particular region," says Mihaela Pavel, an analyst with the program.
Because the work of an LO often involves requesting information or assistance from these foreign agencies, having access to tangible and helpful resources gives the LOs something to offer their AOR countries.
"For the LOs, the program is one of the only tools they have to give back to the foreign countries or contacts they have," says S/Sgt. Steeves Veilleux, the manager of the Capacity Building Program. "And it also helps them build relationships with local contacts."
A better approach
For Abdallah, he wanted to offer the police agencies in his AOR basic skills officers could use throughout their careers, as well as techniques that would be helpful when foreign assistance was required for Canadian investigations. And so he identified interviewing techniques.
"What I noticed was essentially police officers yelling at suspects and just thinking that the fact that they're police officers would impress or intimidate people into talking to them," says Abdallah. "I thought, 'We're beyond that. At this stage, we can do better.' "
In collaboration with the Capacity Building Program, a project proposal was prepared to obtain funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. The reasoning for the need being that although his AOR didn't produce a large number of files with a Canadian connection, the files that did were often important ones.
Funding was approved for seven one-week sessions with 24 candidates per session. The program, which included candidates from Morocco, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, had a train the trainer approach, started in January 2013 and finished last fall.
Cst. Eric Boissoneault, who is an RCMP interviewing techniques instructor from Quebec, sat in on the last two of those sessions. It can be difficult to get subject matter experts released for these projects, but Boissoneault says the benefit for the RCMP is clear.
"We were there to teach them to meet an international standard of interviewing techniques," says Boissoneault. "So when we request information from them in the future, they're going to gather it in the way we want them to and a way that's respectful of human rights."
Influencing change
Abdallah says the course had a huge impact in Morocco especially. When they were delivering the first course, he realized the Moroccan legislation didn't make some of the techniques possible.
He invited a contact at the Ministry of Justice to observe one of the sessions to see its validity. And a year and a half later, changes have now been enacted in their legislation and the techniques are being incorporated at their police academy.
The success of the project in Morocco is exactly what Veilleux says they hope to accomplish through the capacity building program.
"The return benefit is simple in a way," says Veilleux. "When you have foreign police forces with better skills and knowledge to investigate, the better they're going to be able to help us when we need their assistance."