Role of UN police evolves from observing to ‘coaching,’ top adviser says

United Nations police must change from their traditional role as observers and monitors in peacekeeping operations to building capacity and skills among local forces so they are able to engage more effectively with the community, the UN’s Police Adviser said today.

Mark Kroeker, who worked as a Los Angeles policeman for 32 years before joining the UN, said in the past police working on peacekeeping missions have been mainly involved in “monitoring, observing and recording” but a quiet revolution has been underway since 2000 moving the force to play a more direct, hands-on role.

“The fundamental purpose of police in missions now, all of us, is to build institutional capacity in post-conflict environments. We believe this is the principle function,” Mr. Kroeker told the UN New Service in a wide-ranging interview.

“The new police officer is a coach, the old police officer was a watcher. And this new role involves such things as building police academies, reinstituting crime labs, designing and helping to implement traffic systems for cities or indeed building forces where none existed, as in Kosovo and Timor,” he added.

Another recent success, said Mr. Kroeker, was in Liberia where with donor assistance the UN police unit had helped the local force build up and train its own crowd-control capacity.

He added that the more traditional monitoring role of the police has not been dropped completely. Rather, it has been transformed based on the understanding that for a fully effective UN police force to cope with the increased demands of UN operations in the 21st century, there had to be a change in focus.

“The traditional police officer was up there on the wall of the garrison looking at everything and reporting but the new one is getting off the wall, getting down there with the people to help make things right,” Mr. Kroeker explained.

Currently, 94 countries contribute 7,258 police to UN peacekeeping operations worldwide.