POLICE COMMISSIONER Francis Forbes has gone to Washington, D.C., to attend a meeting on intelligence and information sharing among Caribbean countries.
As president of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP), he has been given an assignment by CARICOM to chair a task force to set up a regional information and intelligence-sharing system among law enforcement agencies in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
"We have been making some progress so far", Commissioner Forbes told The Gleaner on the weekend. "We are at a stage now where we have agreed on the technical format that should be applied, recognising that each of the countries has different levels of resources. Modern technology is sometimes very expensive, so we have come up with a format that is going to be affordable for most countries and Washington has indicated that it is willing to assist us".
Giving an example of how the system could be applied, Commissioner Forbes said that CARICOM countries would want to share information on the movement of known criminals, people who were engaged in transnational organised crime, for instance. "These are areas from which we would benefit if we had this regional information and intelligence-sharing system".
THREAT
He said that with the threat of terrorism and the fact that the region depended heavily on tourism and was often seen as a "soft target", sharing information in real time "could help us to defend against any terrorist threat".
He said that during the two-day meeting, they would hear from the United States Government just what it could do to speed up the project, which he said was expensive and had been going on for some time.
Caribbean police commissioners have long recognised the need for greater intelligence and information sharing to counter drug trafficking in the region.
At a meeting a few years ago, the association agreed that a Regional Organised Counter-Crime Information Sharing System (ROCISS) should be operational by January 1, 1997.
The plan was for police to use computers to communicate and share information.
However, a lack of available funding from the ACCP's main sponsor, the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Programme (ICITAP) was said then to be a cause for concern among the commissioners.
