On 19 September 2016, EUPOL COPPS and GIZ supported a ‘train-the-trainer” drug awareness course in Jericho for the PCP Anti Narcotics Department. The event was preceded by five weeks of training for the Palestinian police officers to further enhance their capabilities in their fight against drugs.
One crucial enabling principle of community policing is crime prevention. With this in mind, police officers need to be enabled to conduct effective awareness campaigns which eventually contribute to crime prevention. While drug-related crimes are a concern in certain parts of the West Bank, the abuse of drugs primarily harms children and juveniles. To raise awareness among most affected parts of the society and to increase trust in the police officers of the Anti-Narcotics Administration (ANA), they need to be very well trained beforehand. Afterwards, these qualified ANA officers and police officers from Community Police Stations (CPS, which have been trained on Community Policing by the GIZ Programme in the last months) will jointly reach out to the respective communities and raise awareness on the issue of drug abuse. After this course, GIZ will also support a designated training for female officers of ANA to teach them on specific approaches for women and girls, thus enabling them to better address these sections of society.
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