JERSEY police officers could be sent to St Malo on short secondments next year to benefit from French training facilities and shared intelligence as both jurisdictions look at “opportunities to learn from each other”.
Police chief Robin Smith said he could also foresee French officers patrolling the Island’s streets as part of a secondment process, following discussions with senior officials in the Police Nationale.
Mr Smith explained that he and Guernsey’s chief officer, Ruari Hardy, were invited to St Malo this summer to attend a graduation of French police officers.
He said: “It was a very kind and generous invitation and, truth be told, I didn’t quite realise the size and the extent of the Police Nationale’s footprint in St Malo. The training centre there, which is huge, is one of four Police Nationale training centres in France.”
During the visit, the police chief also met the mayor of St Malo, Gilles Lurton, and a number of high-ranking officials.
One suggestion, which Mr Smith said was put forward by senior officers in the Police Nationale, was that officers from Jersey could potentially come to St Malo on short secondments.
He added: “Why wouldn’t we? Certainly I could see that happening next year, but we would want to have more conversations about how that could work.
“But I don’t see any reason why we [couldn’t] have French officers here and Jersey officers there – particularly in their training schools.
“As part of our training, wouldn’t that be great if we could train with some of our French colleagues?
“Opportunities to learn from each other, learn from different cultures, maybe get some great ideas about how we can better protect Islanders – that has got to be a good thing – and building relationships with our nearest neighbours.”
Mr Smith said: “We wouldn’t necessarily be deploying police officers onto the street at this stage but we will be looking at some form of secondments, training – I could foresee French officers here patrolling our streets as part of a secondment process.
“We are at the foothills of this but the opportunities seem worthy of exploration.”
He described the Police Nationale as “probably a little more militaristic” than the Island’s force, but noted that Jersey’s approach to community policing was one of the areas of interest to French officials.
“I was particularly interested in how they deal with firearms incidents, how we could look at different tactics, different equipment, how they command incidents – not just firearms incidents – [as well as] how they conduct their operations and how they gather their intelligence. We were interested in some of the software that they use, particularly around intelligence gathering – things like digital forensics.”
In addition to meeting the mayor and attending the graduation, Mr Smith was also given tours of police facilities and a fire station and taken out on the water by the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (the French equivalent of the RNLI).
“They were incredibly warm, incredibly hospitable and very keen to further our relationship,” said Mr Smith.
