Fiji Police aids Samoa in autopsy

The Fiji Police Force has been helping Samoa in the area of post-mortem examinations.

While speaking at the Inaugural Pacific Regional Law Enforcement Conference in Nadi this week, Samoa Police Force deputy commissioner Papalii Monalisa Tiai-Keti said this assistance was made possible through a program under the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police.

“The Pacific Community for Law Enforcement Cooperation aims to draw firstly upon Pacific capability and then coordinate external support to address gaps and provide the resources and logistics needed to deliver both short-term operational support and long-term capability development,” she said.

“I have seen the success of PCLEC with recent examples such as the recent secondment of the leading forensic pathologist Dr James Kalougivaki from the Fiji Police to Samoa to assist with post-mortem examination of bodies of police cases that have been in the morgue in excess of nine months due to Samoa’s limited capability in the area of forensic pathology.”

She said another crucial program under the PICP was the Pacific Transnational Crime Network (PTCN).

The network was established by the PICP in 2002 in response to the emergence of significant transnational crime activities in the Pacific.

In 2004, the Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre (PTCCC) was established to assist with the coordination, by collating, analysing anddisseminating, of information from the TCUs across the region.