Today, The Grandma has been reading about Interpol, the international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control that was formed on a day like today in 1923.
The International Criminal Police Organization, official abbreviation ICPO, in French Organisation internationale de police criminelle, commonly known as Interpol, is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control.
Headquartered in Lyon, France, it is the world's largest international police organization, with seven regional bureaus worldwide and a National Central Bureau in all 194 member states.
Interpol was conceived during the first International Criminal Police Congress in 1914, which brought officials from 24 countries to discuss cooperation in law enforcement. It was founded in September 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), adopting many of its current duties throughout the 1930s.
After coming under Nazi control in 1938, the agency was effectively moribund until the end of World War II.
In 1956, the ICPC adopted a new constitution and the name Interpol, derived from its telegraphic address used since 1946.
More information: Interpol
Interpol provides investigative support, expertise, and training to law enforcement worldwide, focusing on three major areas of transnational crime: terrorism, cybercrime, and organized crime.
Its broad mandate covers virtually every kind of crime, including crimes against humanity, child pornography, drug trafficking and production, political corruption, intellectual property infringement, and white-collar crime.
The agency also facilitates cooperation among national law enforcement institutions through criminal databases and communications networks. Contrary to popular belief, Interpol is itself not a law enforcement agency.
Interpol has an annual budget of €142 million, most of which comes from annual contributions by member police forces in 181 countries. It is governed by a General Assembly composed of all member countries, which elects the Executive Committee and the President to supervise and implement Interpol's policies and administration. Day-to-day operations are carried out by the General Secretariat, comprising around 1,000 personnel from over 100 countries, including both police and civilians.
The Secretariat is led by the Secretary-General, currently Jürgen Stock, the former deputy head of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office.
Pursuant to its charter, Interpol seeks to remain politically neutral in fulfilling its mandate, and is thus barred from interventions or activities that are political, military, religious, or racial in nature and from involving itself in disputes over such matters. The agency operates in four languages: Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.
More information: The Balance Careers
Until the 19th century, cooperation among police in different national and political jurisdictions was organized largely on an ad hoc basis, focused on a specific goal or criminal enterprise. The earliest attempt at a formal, permanent framework for international police coordination was the Police Union of German States, formed in 1851 to bring together police from various German-speaking states.
Its activities were centred mostly on political dissidents and criminals. A similar plan was launched by Italy in the 1898 Anti-Anarchist Conference of Rome, which brought delegates from 21 European countries to create a formal structure for addressing the international anarchist movement. Neither the conference nor its follow-up meeting in St. Petersburg in 1904 yielded results.
The early 20th century saw several more efforts to formalize international police cooperation, as growing international travel and commerce facilitated transnational criminal enterprises and fugitives of the law.
The earliest was the International Criminal Police Congress hosted by Monaco in 1914, which brought police and legal officials from two dozen countries to discuss international cooperation in investigating crimes, sharing investigative techniques, and extradition procedures.
The Monaco Congress laid out twelve principles and priorities that would eventually become foundational to Interpol, including providing direct contact between police in different nations; creating an international standard for forensics and data collection; and facilitating the efficient processing of extradition requests. The idea of an international police organization remained dormant due to the First World War.
The United States attempted to lead a similar effort in 1922 through the International Police Conference in New York City, but it failed to attract international attention.
A year later, in 1923, a new initiative was undertaken at another International Criminal Police Congress in Vienna, spearheaded by Johannes Schober, President of the Viennese Police Department. The 22 delegates agreed to found the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), the direct forerunner of Interpol, which would be based in Vienna. Founding members included police officials from Austria, Germany, Belgium, Poland, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. The same year, wanted person notices were first published in the ICPC's International Public Safety Journal.
The United Kingdom joined in 1928. The United States did not join Interpol until 1938, although a U.S. police officer unofficially attended the 1923 congress. By 1934, the ICPC's membership more than doubled to 58 nations.
Following Anschluss in 1938, the Viennese-based organization fell under the control of Nazi Germany, and the Commission's headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942. Most member states withdrew their support during this period.
From 1938 to 1945, the presidents of the ICPC included Otto Steinhäusl, Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. All were generals in the SS, and Kaltenbrunner was the highest ranking SS officer executed after the Nuremberg Trials.
More information: Police
In 1946, after the end of World War II, the organization was revived as the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) by officials from Belgium, France, Scandinavia and the UK. Its new headquarters were established in Paris, then from 1967 in Saint-Cloud, a Parisian suburb. They remained there until 1989 when they were moved to their present location in Lyon.
Until the 1980s, Interpol did not intervene in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in accordance with Article 3 of its Charter, which prohibited intervention in political matters.
Contrary to frequent portrayals in popular culture, Interpol is not a supranational law enforcement agency and has no agents with arresting powers. Instead, it is an international organization that functions as a network of criminal law enforcement agencies from different countries.
The organization thus functions as an administrative liaison among the law enforcement agencies of the member countries, providing communications and database assistance, mostly through its central headquarters in Lyon.
More information: Taylor & Francis Online
the police being only members of the public
who are paid to give full time attention to duties
which are incumbent on every citizen
in the interests of community welfare and existence.
Robert Peel
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