In 2014, the Tanzania Police Force and Medicine du Monde will commence training approximately 3,500 police recruits at the Moshi Police Academy in harm reduction.
Training grassroots police about harm reduction is essential to ensure police understand their role in and impact on harm reduction approaches. Whilst senior police support is critical, the many layers of police bureaucracies means that policy changes or new information do not necessarily trickle down to the frontline in a timely manner, if at all.
In addition to this great announcement, in December 2013, two workshops were held at Kilwa Road Police Station in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to train police about harm reduction. A total of 36 police officers attended the training, including: four Inspectors, one Acting Superintendent of Police and many rank and file police. The training was conducted by Inspector Abdallah Said Kirungu who recently attended the International Harm Reduction Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania in June 2013.
Inspector Kirungu said there was great enthusiasm in the Tanzania Police Force for training police officers in harm reduction and the public health impacts of policing. The two workshops were supported by Openair Media and Medicine du Monde and included presentations by people who were former drug users and had faced mistreatment by the police in the past. The speakers explained how police officers mistreated them by harassment, violence and unlawful detention and searches. Police were regarded as the worst enemies of drug users but today things are seen to be changing. Inspector Kirungu was buoyant about progress in police harm reduction training in Tanzania and expected positive changes would continue.
Police officers undergoing the training were encouraged to sign the Statement of Support for Harm Reduction Approaches by Law Enforcement Agents to join police worldwide in a commitment to turn their learning of harm reduction into local practice.
Also in that HR training to Tanzanian police officers also were done by experienced staffs from Medecins Du Monde Harm Reduction program to PWUD in Temeke district ,Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on NSEP ,Those facilitators are Damali Lucas, Nicolous Abraham, Ramadhan Abdallah , and Dotto Salum.This year 2014 ,they have planned to train more stakeholders apart from police officers as they always did three past years of harm reduction program in Temeke district.
Thank you Damali. It takes a whole team of people to make a program like this work so thank you for highlighting the facilitators who contributed. Congratulations to you all. Please keep us updated on your work so we can share it with others who are trying to implement similar programs. Thank you.
some times the environment of police officer’s while doing their work mistreat drag users by harassment so we need a good knowledge to improve our work to lead or to educate drug usrer to stop using drugs….
Thanks for your comment. Police officers work in difficult circumstances and are often caught between competing demands from society. Many police are only trained in how to enforce the law which implies that arrest and prosecution achieves the ‘best’ outcome. However, often this is not the case, and especially in relation to drug use and sex work. Gradually more people are seeing the importance of investing in police education about harm reduction and LEAHN facilitates this process where we can. If you haven’t already, please Join the LEAH Network using the link on the leahn.org homepage. Thank you. Good luck!
It true that police is ‘the community and community is the police’ our duty is to serve the community which affected with drug in order to reduce crime. Remember HARM REDUCTION = CRIME REDUCTION.