TCI: Police Trained Disaster Investigators

#TurksandCaicos, July 29, 2021 – The Royal TCI Police has hosted a three-day Disaster Victim Identification Investigator certification and Mass Casualty Management workshop.

The recent training forum was facilitated by the United Kingdom (UK) National Disaster Victim Identification Unit, and funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The training was aimed to develop and train key staff in Mass Fatalities Management to meet the demands of a mass casualty incident in the Turks and Caicos Islands in line with international standards.

The sessions combined theory and practical exercises and covered disaster scene management, disaster victim recovery, post-mortem investigations and documentation processes in line with Interpol disaster victim’s guidelines and standards to aid victim identification.

Fourteen officers from Providenciales, six from Grand Turk, one officer from South Caicos, an officer representing North Caicos, and representatives from the TCI Regiment were all trained to attend mass casualty incidents and correctly recover, package and process victims for further forensics investigations.

The training targeted the relevant department heads of the RTCIPF responsible for incident management, other government agencies that included the Governor’s Office, the Department of Disaster Management & Emergencies (DDME), TCI Environmental Health Department, TCIG Fire Department, TCI Regiment and the TCI Red Cross.

This training is the first of its kind in the Turks and Caicos Islands, with the Turks and Caicos Islands being the second country in the Caribbean to receive the same from the FCDO.