Language

Reporter's Notebook: Stephen Peacock

State Dept. Contractor to Train Bolivian Internal Investigators

Posted by Stephen Peacock - April 25, 2006 at 9:58 pm
The U.S. State Dept. is planning to deploy a law enforcement training & development advisor to Bolivia, where the still-unnamed private contractor annually will train about 1,500 officers and agents of the Government of Bolivia (GOB). The contractor will serve as an "expert advisor" to the director of the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) as well as to the Bolivian National Police (BNP) and the national counternarcotics police, known as Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotrafico, or FELCN. The advisor will be tasked with providing technical assistance to internal affairs investigators at BNP/FELCN as well implementing a management reform initiative. The overarching goal behind the deployment of this advisor is to help the GOB “respond to the threat of drug trafficking and other forms of transnational crime, including trafficking in persons,” according to a personnel services contracting-notice posted April 21 to the FedBizOpps database.

The bolstering of anticorruption and internal police-reform are key elements of this position. In order to accomplish these tasks, the contractor will assist the BNP and FELCN commanders in training and improving internal investigative units such as Direccion Nacional de Responsabilidad Profesional, or DNRP, “and related Tribunals that conduct internal investigations and promote greater integrity in police activity.”

Additionally, the job involves oversight of four separate NAS projects: the Law Enforcement Development (LEDP) project; the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) project; the Secure Borders project; and, the counternarcotics training school (GARRAS) project. The advisor will independently evaluate these and other programs in coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Military Group.

About Stephen Peacock

Biography
I'm a former Washington, DC, journalist (1998-2003) who most recently worked for Communications Daily and Washington Internet Daily (WID), investigative newsletters that cover the telecommunications, broadcast and Internet industries. Following the 9/11 attacks, my news beat expanded beyond Capitol Hill telecom/TV/IT policy and began to include technology-policy coverage at the Pentagon and Dept. of Homeland Security. I've written over a thousand articles about government and industry affairs, and I'm pleased to say that I was the reporter who broke the story about the Total Information Awareness surveillance/data-collection initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I've written articles for publications including NACLA Report on the Americas, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journal, SoJo Mail (Sojourners), and the Tampa Tribune. I've also written a memoir about my former career as a plainclothes security officer of the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York City, Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze. I look forward to contributing to the fine work being done here at NarcoSphere.

Latest Notebook Entries

more

Add comment

Our Policy on Comment Submissions: Co-publishers of Narco News (which includes The Narcosphere and The Field) may post comments without moderation. All co-publishers comment under their real name, have contributed resources or volunteer labor to this project, have filled out this application and agreed to some simple guidelines about commenting.

Narco News has recently opened its comments section for submissions to moderated comments (that’s this box, here) by everybody else. More than 95 percent of all submitted comments are typically approved, because they are on-topic, coherent, don’t spread false claims or rumors, don’t gratuitously insult other commenters, and don’t engage in commerce, spam or otherwise hijack the thread. Narco News reserves the right to reject any comment for any reason, so, especially if you choose to comment anonymously, the burden is on you to make your comment interesting and relevant. That said, as you can see, hundreds of comments are approved each week here. Good luck in your comment submission!

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

User login

Reporters' Notebooks