29/01/2020
The EL PAcCTO project: Support for AMERIPOL organised a meeting to strengthen police cooperation through the Police Information System
Participants in the meeting held in Paraguay
Police institutions from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic met in Asunción to participate in the “3rd Meeting of Experts for the Design of the AMERIPOL Police Information System”. The meeting was organised by ‘EL PAcCTO:Support for AMERIPOL’, a project funded by the European Union which offers assistance against organised cross-border crime and is managed, in part, by the FIIAPP.
The Police Information System (SIPA in the Spanish acronym) for the Police Community of the Americas (AMERIPOL) was launched almost three years ago with the aim of providing the police forces of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru with a strategic database on drug trafficking. Since it has been in use, the system has been storing data on drug trafficking offences and now holds more than 30,000 files.
This third meeting of the SIPA was held with the objective of clarifying matters relating to the content, the data model and the functionalities of the system.
The meeting was opened by the Minister of the Interior of Paraguay, Euclides Acevedo, who highlighted the importance of AMERIPOL’s role in the evaluation and prevention of the threat and stressed the need to exchange information to fight crime. In the words of the minister: “The police role has to go from mere urban surveillance to forecasting and anticipating the sophisticated efforts of organised crime.”
For his part, the General Commander of the Paraguayan Police, Commissioner Francisco Resquín, recalled the importance of police cooperation in a world where crime does not respect borders, mentioning the example of EUROPOL and thanking the European Union for its support in the region.
The Project Manager of EL PAcCTO: Support for AMERIPOL, Marcos Alvar, stressed that the signatories to the Buenos Aires Convention already have the legal support that allows them to exchange information on organised crime.
The three meetings held and the conclusions drawn from them will allow the construction of a solid, efficient, participatory and permanent system to facilitate the fight against cross-border organised crime. In addition, the SIPA is expected to allow interoperability of databases between AMERIPOL and EUROPOL and enable the regional threat to be assessed through a report similar to EUROPOL’s SOCTA.
