The NYPD will sending New York’s Finest to help train cops in earthquake-ravaged Haiti under a new agreement signed yesterday with the U.S. State Department.
At a press conference at One Police Plaza, Assistant Secretary of State David Johnson joined Commissioner Raymond Kelly – who performed a similar role in Haiti in the mid 1990’s as a government contractor – in announcing how the NYPD will lend a new hand to the Haitian force.
“We’ll go down to make an assessment, determine our own value, if you will, and then if the situation calls for it we’ll dispatch police officers to Haiti. It could be for a variety of things. Right now, we’re mostly focused on training.”
It marks the first time the State Department signed such an agreement with a municipal police force, Johnson said, lauding the NYPD and Kelly’s previous assistance to Haiti.
A compliment of about 80 NYPD and FDNY search and rescue members has been in Haiti where they have unearthed six survivors from the rubble.
“If there ever was an image of hope it was the young boy with outstretched arms embracing life,” Kelly said, referring an 8-year-old boy rescued by the New York contingent last Tuesday evening.
Kelly and Johnson, who heads the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics Affairs, said the feds and the NYPD had been interacting for a long time because of Haiti’s historic role as a transfer point for drug trafficking through the Caribbean.
Kelly visited Haiti just a week ago with several detectives at the State Department’s request to examine the techniques used by the Haitian cops to combat a growing kidnapping trend.
Kelly yesterday said the NYPD gave the thumbs up to the techniques, but said the force lacked certain technology that was available to help a big city force like the NYPD.
When the earthquake struck, the State Department and the NYPD saw an opportunity to formalize a way for the NYPD to provide consistent instruction to the Haitian force by sending a handful of cops there at a time.
“We had been talking about it for a while,” Kelly said.
The expense will be paid by the feds, with only the NYPD salaries paid by the city.
No decision had been made on when the first cops would be sent to Haiti under the new agreement.
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