While no for­mal train­ing agree­ments are cur­rent­ly in place be­tween the TTPS and the Mi­a­mi-Dade Sher­iff’s Of­fice (MD­SO), Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says he is in­ter­est­ed in what the Flori­da-based po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tion has to of­fer.

Dur­ing a brief­ing for vis­it­ing re­porters at the MD­SO’s train­ing cen­tre in Do­ral on Mon­day, it was re­vealed that po­lice from on­ly two Caribbean coun­tries—Haiti and Guyana—re­ceived train­ing through the Sher­iff’s of­fice.

Sgt Os­car Pla of the MD­SO said the de­part­ment of­fered an ar­ray of train­ing pro­grammes from ba­sic po­lice cy­cling and boat­ing, to SWAT (Spe­cial Weapons and Tac­tics) train­ing and crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

All cours­es were done in-house at the train­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

He not­ed that train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for coun­tries arose when rep­re­sen­ta­tives from that coun­try’s US Em­bassy made rec­om­men­da­tions for po­lice of­fi­cers to be part of the pro­gramme.

“Each US Em­bassy es­pe­cial­ly in the west­ern hemi­sphere has an In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment (INL) sec­tion, so there are po­lice ad­vi­sors in those of­fices, they de­ter­mine what train­ing they want.

“They’ll reach out to our li­ai­son in Wash­ing­ton DC. There are over 50 US-based part­ners that they work with.

“They will reach out to us for ex­am­ple and ask if we can pro­vide train­ing for a coun­try and that’s how the re­la­tion­ship starts.”

Pla said fund­ing for such train­ing pro­grammes was de­ter­mined by US Con­gress.

The MD­SO, is the largest po­lice de­part­ment in the south-east­ern US and the eighth largest law en­force­ment body in the US over­all.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der wel­comed any op­por­tu­ni­ty for po­lice of­fi­cers to sharp­en their in­ves­tiga­tive and crime-fight­ing skills, not­ing that he would not “turn down” any op­por­tu­ni­ty for skills-shar­ing.

“Any type of train­ing that can ben­e­fit the or­gan­i­sa­tion and the wider na­tion, I wel­come it, some with in­vi­ta­tion and some with­out.

“I’m not turn­ing down any help, we need all the help we can get ... once it’s avail­able we’re avail­able too.”

Alexan­der said such joint ini­tia­tives were im­por­tant to strength­en lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty giv­en the evolv­ing na­ture of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

Mean­while in Mi­a­mi, Pla said the ben­e­fits of such ini­tia­tives were not lim­it­ed to spe­cialised train­ing, but could al­so lead to net­work­ing and en­hanced sup­port for in­ves­ti­ga­tions in oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, re­fer­ring to the as­sis­tance of Hon­duran Po­lice in cap­tur­ing a Mi­a­mi mur­der sus­pect in their coun­try.

Giv­en Mi­a­mi’s lo­ca­tion and the pres­ence of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of Caribbean mi­grants, sup­port and co-op­er­a­tion is crit­i­cal for the sher­iff of­fice’s suc­cess.