Presentation of ILEA Training Certificates to Police Officers

Ambassador Roger A. Meece
Monday, 26 June 2006, 5:00 pm
Ambassador’s Residence

I am happy to be able to recognize the achievement of six Congolese law enforcement officers this evening.  At the invitation of the government of the United States, these men traveled in April to the International Law Enforcement Academy  (ILEA) in Gaborone, Botswana.  There they were trained in a program called Law Enforcement Executive Development, and that for a period of six weeks.

The instructors at ILEA set out to increase the managerial capabilities of these men, who already occupy supervisory positions.  Our aim was to enable them better to fight crime in the DRC, by examining such topics as financial crimes and corruption, drug trafficking, and alien smuggling.  Our aim is also to facilitate cooperation with U.S. law enforcement agencies in, together, combating transnational crime.  Moreover, our aim in this training program is to foster regional and other international exchanges with the Congolese police.
  
Our desire is to cooperate with an increasingly competent Congolese police force, and our cooperation is part of a larger effort on the part of the international community at large to do the same.  Whether we are talking about national police, anti-riot police, judicial police; or whether we are talking about MONUC, the European Union, South Africa, France, Belgium, Japan, Angola, the United States and other bilateral partners, the effort to build the institutions of the Congolese police force is an important one.

And for good reason.  In America, we admiringly refer to the police as “the thin blue line.” On a daily basis, the police are the line between rule of law and impunity.  Sometimes that line can indeed be stretched very thin. In the minds of our citizens, however, that line must never be allowed to break, even – and especially – in times of political turmoil.  Without rule of law there can be no democracy.

The police in any democracy must defend the rule of law.  Law guarantees rights to citizens, and the police must know and respect those rights.  If you respect your citizens’ rights, they will respect you.  Police officers must never themselves become the law, or make up their own law, or in any way abuse the authority their uniforms and badges give them.
       
Now we all can’t be lawyers, and knowing the law is a lot to ask of the policeman on the beat.  And this is where you, their supervisors, come in.  Your job is to discipline your subordinates so that they act always according to the law, so that they see their job as the noble one it is: a public servant, and a member of the thin blue line, which protects the public from lawlessness and impunity.  You cannot succeed in defending and enforcing the law without earning the trust of the Congolese public.

Police work, properly done, will be vital to your democracy.  I congratulate you for aspiring to improve your professionalism and thereby win the confidence of the Congolese people.  Your training certificate symbolizes your aspiration.  Only together can you – the police, and the Congolese people – establish the rule of law.
  
Please come forward as your name is called.  My congratulations to you all.