The PDD, together with the French Embassy in Skopje, also organized several innovative training courses for the MoIA’s Special Units Department (SUD) in the area of maintaining security and restoring peace and order. Several French experts from DCCRS17 provided expertise to strengthen the SUD’s structure and performance capacity. Through this support, 21 RDU employees were trained on “Maintaining Security by Handling Armed Offenders in a Crowd” and 30 employees of the SUD were trained on “Techniques and Tactics for Maintaining and Restoring Public Peace and Order”. Additionally, the PDD supported a training and equipment needs assessment for the SUD for 2012, carried out by two experts from the Austrian National Police. During the year, the PDD was also requested by the MoIA to provide financial and technical support to the implementation of the training course on the new Law on Criminal Procedures (LCP) in accordance with the MoIA’s plan of implementation. The new LCP has been part of the government’s multiyear judicial reform strategy and it has significantly changed the way in which police officers are supposed to conduct their work. As a result, 7,290 police officers needed to be trained on the changes brought about by the new law until mid 201218. In 2012, the PDD was going to continue to support the implementation of the training courses on the LCP at the central level and to monitor the LCP’s implementation at the decentralized level. As identified by the working group (WG) on the implementation of the LoIA, and advocated by the PDD, there has been a strong need for the MoIA to adopt a Training Strategy. Based on this recommendation, a sub-WG was set up to develop it. The sub-WG consisted of six representatives from relevant MoIA departments, as well as two representatives of international organizations (ICITAP and OSCE). The WG drafted a Training Strategy that aims to ensure an efficient, streamlined and co-ordinated, centralized and decentralized training system for all MoIA employees. The first draft of the Strategy was finalized in midDecember and distributed to relevant MoIA officials and international community representatives, expected to be approved in early 2012. 2011 saw some activity in the area of training at the decentralized (or SIA) level. Since 2010, each of the eight regions within the country has had a dedicated training room equipped with the assistance of ICITAP and the OSCE. However, due to the systemization process the status of trainers and their position within the police became unclear with a marked reduction in decentralized training activities. Regardless of the problem, regional training courses took place and were monitored by Police Advisers which included: first aid training, tachograph training, drugs identification, and election monitoring. The PDD also supported a number of study visits for MoIA personnel in 2011. 4,000 copies of the Basic Drug Awareness Booklet (first designed in 2003) were printed to increase the police capacity to effectively identify illegal drugs and psychotropic substances. Some 2,000 copies were disseminated in the first quarter of the year to Regional Training Co-ordinators and Heads of Prevention to be further distributed to police staff that had completed a course on “Drug Identification and Awareness”. The Department also monitored the delivery of the “Election Security Training” to more than 5,000 police officers country-wide. To supplement the training, a PDD-sponsored pocket size Manual on Election Security was distributed to some 6,000 police officers prior to Election Day. 17 18 Direction Centrale des Compaignes Republicaines de Securite (Directorate General of the Republican Security Companies; i.e. French riot control forces). However, there is a chance that the date of full implementation of the new LCP may be changed, which would also change the PDD’s training delivery plan. 73