By Christopher Oji
The Inspector-General of Police, (IGP) Alkali  Usman Baba has said that the police high command was making efforts to boost the  Forensic Department of the Force for effective crime fighting and investigation.
The IGP who spoke Wednesday  at the opening ceremony of a  3- day  Capacity Building Workshop  for  Police Public Relations Officers across the country organized in  partnership with the Nigeria – German Development Cooperation (GIZ), with the  theme: ‘Crime Scene Management and Conclusive Investigation, the role of Police Spokespersons,said the Forensic department  is a vital section of the force that needed congent attention.
According to Baba , the force was  collaborating with the  GIZ  to train police public relations officers  of the force  across the country on forensic,” It is important for all public relations officers to know much about forensic since they are the first respondents to crime scene as they would have fore knowledge of crime scene . They should be able to know what to touch and what not to touch so that investigation will not be jeopardised.
“Training and retraining is the second thing we require after manpower. If you have manpower the next thing you need is training;the public relations department is a place where officers in the department should be versitile in the issue of administration, operation and investigation. They should be jack of all trades and  masters of all ;that is why we have to improve their capacity in the scene of crime; operation and investigation.
“Response  to scene of crime requires  alot of professional, tactics and skills, because when they go to scene of crime or incident there are issues about evidence  that they need to know how to preserve evidence and preserve the scene itself, in terms of having a forensic that may require analysis, so we are developing their skills in trying to respond to the public and try  to give them the details of what has happened without compromising or not jeopardising investigation.
“There is  room for improvement in  our forensic investigation.Our forensic laboratory can give us what we want, but in a situation we don’t get what we want, we may also require assistance from other sister agencies or those with functional one outside the country. I sincerely appreciate  GIZ Nigeria for approval and undertaking to sponsor and organize this workshop as part of the many interventions by the organization in building and strengthening Police structures and capacity in Nigeria. I therefore, declare this workshop open”.
The director of GIZ in Nigeria, Mr Gertjan Gruijter, said the organization would continue to train Nigerian police officers for effective policing and crime-fighting.
Gruijter said  the police as a vital organ of the government required training and retraining, which GIZ was doing it’s best to assist the force to  make it better to compete with international standard.
“We have started training in Lagos and the next batch will be in Abuja .We are going to support the participants in the areas of crime scene management, laboratory support, operational support,  human rights and  accountability.”