Happening At The RTC

Published September 25, 2019

It’s been an amazing training year at the RTCso far. The past few months have been extremely busy coordinating multiple courses and workshops with the goal of building capacity for law enforcement. Thumbs up to the excellent team of staff who work behind the scenes to ensure that trainings are enjoyable. Over the past quarter, the center has successfully trained a total of 330 officers with majority representing countries across the West African region. 

In the month of July, the RTC hosted a Leadership course for Women in Law Enforcement facilitated by instructors from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC). Even though the class was largely francophone, it was interesting to see how participants worked together in teams to share their experiences as women working in a male dominated field. Participants appreciated learning about leadership styles and individual behavior motivators. The highlight of the course was an excellent panel discussion led by five (5) RTC alumni representing women who occupy positions of influence in their law enforcement careers. They were happy to share candid approaches that they have used to overcome challenges.

We concluded the month with a 2-week course on Wildlife Investigations which brought together participants from Gabon, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Benin, Nigeria, Ghana and Togo. The course was expertly delivered by instructors from the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was good to welcome back an alumnus of the RTC and ILEA Gaborone who was a great addition to the instructor team. His experience and perspective were well received by the class. The course centered on how to conduct criminal investigations on poaching and wildlife trafficking. Instructors incorporated a lot of practical exercises and role-playing activities to demonstrate a variety of investigative techniques that can be applied in wildlife investigations.

We started the month of August with a two-week course on International Air Cargo and Border Interdiction led by instructors from the U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Both classes had a week of instruction on techniques used to identify fraudulent documents. Participants were highly motivated as they engaged in practical exercises on vehicle inspection and air cargo interdiction.  The social event organized during that week offered for a good platform for networking given that participants represented ten (10) different West African countries made up of Francophones, Anglophones and Lusophones.

September has been a very remarkable month considering the number of achievements in a very short period. We welcome our newest alumni from the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) course to the RTC Alumni Family. We had an interesting time exploring the different issues facing law enforcement officers when working TIP cases and handling TIP victims. We are hopeful that the strategies that were reached at the end of the course will go a long way in making your jobs more fulfilling.

We just concluded a one-week course on Financial Crime Investigations led by instructors from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This was a Ghana-specific course sponsored by INL’s office of Africa and Middle East. (INL/AME). For the first time, the RTC hosted delegates from the Bank of Ghana and Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission who contributed greatly to the discussion on challenges faced while investigating financial crimes.  We received interesting feedback from one of the participants. In his own words, this is what he had to share:

“Most of the agencies present were unusually open with information. This helped us to identify the lapses within our system. Experiences shared have been very useful and the contact list will be very helpful. Now I have a pool of people I can reach out to for assistance.’’

What a way to close out the month of September! We hope that the last quarter will be even more exciting! Please share your fondest RTC experience with us via our Facebook and twitter handles.