Meetings of the International Law Enforcement Forum
The first two meetings of the International Law Enforcement Forum (ILEF) were held in the United States, at the Pennsylvania State University, in April 2001 and October 2002. since then workshops have been held every 18-24 months and alternate between the UK, US and Canada. The 'workshops' on less-lethal and minimal force concepts, technologies, and deployment at the expert practitioner level are a unique feature of ILEF. A record of every ILEF meeting has been published (except the very first one) .
ILEF has facilitated the creation of a ‘strategic window’, where despite the jurisdictional and cultural/contextual differences of participant organisations and countries, ‘the commonality of operational challenges, threat and risk assessment and policy issues’ has emerged;
The meetings bring together subject matter experts from a variety of backgrounds who are interested in how police services internationally prepare and are equipped to deal with potentially violent incidents. The focus is on minimising to the greatest extent possible resort to lethal force and avoidance of unintended serious and life threatening injuries as a result of inappropriate use of force. Public and officer safety, and promoting confidence in policing is at the core of all that ILEF exists for.
Our International workshops have facilitated:
The international impact of our work can be seen by clicking of the achievements link on the menu bar above.
A Meeting a Need: While nations’ militaries have long used frameworks and forums to share information, the same did not exist for law enforcement agencies prior to the International Law Enforcement Forum. It enables critical information sharing for police, which no other international forum exists. This was indicated by Steve Palmer, Executive Director of the research center at University of Regina in Canada and formerly with Canadian Police Research Center: "In the very early days -- 2003, 2004 -- when we had issues with Tasers® and use of force, other people around the table said, 'where do you go for advice?' Canada had a very small talent. There are not a lot of places where we can go and get advice."
Critical to Policing Missions: Particularly in an era of constrained budgets, the need to travel and meet is likely to be questioned. However, the need for law enforcement to do so was indicated by the US Office of Management Budget's CONTROLLER ALERT: Travel and Conferences, dated May 23, 2013:
"... There are circumstances in which physical collocation is necessary to complete the mission. These circumstances may include, but are not limited to, collaborations in the scientific
community, unique training events for the law enforcement community, or the need to performformal inspections as part of an agency’s oversight and investigatory responsibilities."8
The International Law Enforcement Form has been critical to policing missions. "...the information that the UK has gained from especially ILEF has been invaluable in informing policy, the technical know-how, and the choices that we made in the weapons...Choices were informed because of the experience and the knowledge and what happened in other countries," stated Graham Smith of UK's Home Office Centre For Applied Science and Technology. As he further stated, "You've got to have these groups." The Forum's values for policing have been recognized repeatedly in workshops, to include:
Network of Experts: "ILEF fills a gap for people like me, who are gripping the rails at public inquiries ...we use the Forum and experts around the world to tap into to say, 'Do you know about this?'" ILEFenables participants to access other agencies’ expertise in several areas: tactics, operations, intelligence,policies, medicine, command and control and technologies.
Sharing Best Practices: Law enforcement agencies are separate entities facing common problems. ILEFallows participants to share agencies and nations’ best practices, which would otherwise be stove-piped. "In London, right after a shooting, there was a series of phone calls to the US and in the UK to people in this room here... asking counterparts how they would approach a similar situation," stated Colonel Andy Mazzara USMC (Ret) head of Penn State's Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies. "Some of the answers were enlightening."
Multi-level and Interdisciplinary Review of Issues: "What I saw with ILEF," said Canada's Steve Palmer, "is the sharing of information with this panel of experts: practitioners, scientific/technical community, medical community, some government policy folks. Having them around the table, you can have a very informed discussion quite quickly on issues."
Open Examination of Issues: ILEF is not aligned with a particular agency. It also maintains an informal process. Thus, participants are able to more freely address issues, with emphasis on reduced parochialism.
Advancing Appropriate and Effective Minimal Force Options: The International Law Enforcement Forum has informed the use of less-lethal technologies in participating nations. After Irish law enforcement changed the aiming point for less-lethal baton rounds from center of chest to belt buckle, ILEF participants proposed the same for US agencies, thus reducing fatalities. More recently Martin Hubbard with the UK’s Ministry of Defence stated, "This Forum (ILEF) is invaluable to myself and the colleagues that I discussed this with, in terms of getting a different slant on the way in which non-lethals and less-lethals are used. I find it very useful."
Future Mentor for Other Nations' Using of Less-Lethal Technologies: "I am seeing more, particularly in the developing world, commissions of inquiry, which are saying, 'get less-lethal weapons,'" stated UK's Colin Burrows, ILEF Advisory Board Chairman. "But, we are not seeing those thought processes for those (weapons)...even in the developed world, people who are new into the thing (less-lethals), are making all of the mistakes that we have made." As UK’s Graham Smith stated, "We could provide valuable information for them...if we don't, the bad outcomes that you're going to see in that country, are going to affect weapons uses in our own countries and other countries."
Model for Others: Following ILEF, the Canadian Law Enforcement Forum was established, enablinginformation sharing across Canada’s jurisdictional boundaries. The importance was indicated by Canada's Steve Palmer: "Our focus is on major events...We are seeing transitions in how we are managing those events, focusing much more on the preventative side, then the reaction side... We are also seeing multi- sites, whether it's the 'Idle-No-More,' the native movements, and others in Canada. We are trying to coordinate across a very large country of four and five time zones, different activities... We are trying tomake sure that we have the right tactics and responses for that as well." An effort has been made to establish a similar forum among law enforcement agencies in Latin America.