Community Policing in Timor-Leste

ETLJB  5 July 2013 - The East Timor police have provided training to village community police in two Districts - Cova Lima and Liquisa - that focused on working with the community to provide security in the villages on those Districts.

According to a report in The Dili Weekly on 4 June 2013, Community Police Commander, Superintendent Boavida Ribeiro, said the objective of the training is to put security volunteers in each village in order to create a sense of security.

“The training is required because we are relocating one police officer to each village and we have 442 villages, so the 442 police will be put in each village,” said Commander Ribeiro, recently in Dili.

“We’ve held it in Liquisa and Suai districts, but the quality in each district is not the same so we look into the number of villages in each district, for example in Liquisa we held training for officials from 23 villages because there are 23 villages,” said Commander Ribeiro. In Covalima district, the training was given to officials from 30 villages while in Dili when they begin the training it will be given to more than 50 people.

“The training is conducted in each district for three days to give information about the function of the police in each village, how to improve their capacity and how to work together with the community to provide security in their village,” explained Commander Ribeiro. Source: The Dili Weekly 4 July 2013 Edited by Warren L. Wright