Manama: Bahrain has hired John Yates, the former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to oversee the reform of its police force, a British daily said.
Yates is the second super cop to be appointed by Bahrain this week after a high-profile report by an international fact-finding commission concluded that security forces needed reforms.
Manama on Thursday said that it appointed John Timoney, a former head of Miami police who also worked in Philadelphia and New York, to ensure its procedures are reformed to international standards.
The overhaul of the police was a major recommendation in the 500-page report released by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) on November 23 after four months of investigations that included thousands of interviews and testimonies as well as visits to prisons, detention centres and hospitals.
Yates told the Daily Telegraph that he would draw on experience in the Met and from working on community policing programmes with Jamaican police.
“Bahrain’s police have some big challenges ahead, not dissimilar to those the UK itself faced only a couple of decades ago, but I have been impressed that the King is doing the right thing by pressing on with big reforms,” he told the daily.
“This is a big challenge which I will undertake with a great reforming police officer like John Timoney.”
Yates said they would be involved with operations at all levels.
“I look forward to speaking to Bahrain’s chief police officers, going out with them on the streets to see the challenges they face, seeing what structures they have in place and helping them to deal better with public order, arrest and detention issues,” he said, quoted by the newspaper.
