Canadian-Trained Motor-Cycle Police Graduate

NP-UN National Affairs Desk.

Ukraine’s first motorcycle police for the City of Kyiv graduated on August 23.

Sixteen of them were trained by two Canadian officers, one from the Ontario Provincial Police, the other from the Halton Regional Police Service, says Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk.

They were trained as trainers, so they can now train other Ukrainian motorcycle police to do their jobs, he told New Pathway – Ukrainian News in Kyiv that same day.

“They (the Canadians) basically just transferred their experience of how Canadian motorcycle policing is done and adapted it to Ukrainian circumstances,” Waschuk added.

The new police will not be used for ceremonial motorcades, but to get through traffic jams by regulating traffic or to get through to accident scenes quickly resolving them.

“This is a very definite new step for Ukrainian policing and its been done by Canadian cops who’ve been developing a sort of rapport with the Ukrainians. They were all fist-thumping and embracing at the end of the course. So, it was very gratifying to watch,” Waschuk said.

The Canadian government-supported program called the Police Training Assistance Project (PTAP), is helping Ukraine advance its police services and develop a training academy for new recruits and current officers.

The PTAP falls under Canada’s $8.1 million, three-year police mission to Ukraine, supporting the reform of their police service. Following unrest surrounding the Maidan revolution in 2014, the Ukrainian government fired more than 10,000 of its police officers, opting to recruit new, young officers for the National Police of Ukraine (NPU).

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