The Dutch Carib­bean Police Force KPCN, together with the Nether­lands police and the Inter­national Criminal Police Organisation INTERPOL, have taken a new, major step in its international co­operation with the forging of an agreement. The agreement means that the islands of Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba are now in direct contact with INTERPOL’S headquarters in Lyon, France, and police colleagues almost all over the world via the INTER­POL connections.

“This allows our KPCN police colleagues to consult and feed the INTERPOL databases themselves and to exchange information worldwide in a secure man­ner,” KPCN said in a press release. “INTERPOL is a worldwide organisation with which 194 member states are affiliated.”

Each member state has a National Central Bureau (NCB). The NCBs main­tain communication with the head office and the oth­er NCBs and are the single point of contact for all en­forcement services. In the Netherlands, this is NCB The Hague, which is set up at the National Internation­al Legal Aid Center LIRC. A sub-NCB is now being opened for the first time in the Caribbean Nether­lands. This sub-NCB falls under the responsibility of NCB The Hague.

The wish for a sub-NCB for the Caribbean Netherlands has existed for a long time at KPCN. Deputy Chief of Police, Ronald Zwarter and Melvin Sint Jago as head of the KPCN information department worked on the actual realisation in coor­dination with INTERPOL NCB The Hague.

“The Dutch Caribbean islands did not yet have a direct connection with the data from INTERPOL. This prevented us from conducting “direct search­es for persons,” said Sint Jago. “We were sometimes dependent on many exter­nal parties for our interna­tional information about criminals. By establishing our own sub-NCB, an in­termediate link has been removed from this process, which of course promotes speed and thus improves international investigation,” Sint Jago said.

“With this INTERPOL connection, we can iden­tify criminals, terrorists and other unwanted persons or criminal groups more quickly and tackle them more effectively, making both the Caribbean part of the Kingdom and the Eu­ropean Netherlands even safer,” said KPCN Chief of Police Jose Rosales.

Contact with INTERPOL

Specially trained KPCN intel colleagues will set to work within the sub-NCB. They form the link be­tween INTERPOL, NCB The Hague and the en­forcement services on the Dutch Caribbean islands Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. The ambition for the future is to extend the access with INTERPOL to the border posts of the Caribbean Netherlands, so that the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee can also query incoming and outgo­ing travellers against the INTERPOL databases.

The Daily Herald.