The Singapore Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau
Pages: 54 to 54
Creation Date: 1959/01/01
The Singapore Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau
The Bureau was constituted early in 1954 as a section of the Customs Department for the purpose of consolidating gains made locally in the vigorous campaign against traffickers in narcotic drugs.
A sound basis, at least in so far as the local ramifications of the traffic were concerned, already existed in the Customs Central Records Office; and expansion, aimed at promoting the closest co-operation with countries having a similar problem, now followed rapidly.
While maintaining the closest liaison with local law enforcement authorities such as the police, the immigration service and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, links were established with numerous suppression agencies in twenty-six other countries, as well as with the International Criminal Police Organization.
A quarterly confidential bulletin is published and distributed to forty-one authorities abroad.
A further and most valuable contribution to better understanding has been afforded by mutual liaison visits and training courses. Officers of the Bureau have visited their counterparts and officers connected with the illicit drug traffic in India, Thailand, Sarawak, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Ceylon, the Persian Gulf, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Officers from Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Sarawak, Ceylon, India, Nepal, the United Kingdom and the United States have visited the Bureau; and in some cases training courses have been provided. Two Iranian officials are scheduled to arrive for a training course next year.
The basic tool of the Bureau is the card index. Information from diverse sources, not necessarily solely concerned with narcotics trafficking (there is a close connexion, for instance, between the traffic in gold and the traffic in drugs; and landing agents expert at running dutiable contraband into lonely beaches are equally expert at landing opium), is fed to the
Bureau, where sifting, evaluation, recording, annotation and dissemination take place.
The process is an expanding one, as the more that is fed into the Bureau, the more it can divulge and the more useful it becomes. Time and again it is proving of great value on the research side and in piecing together the complex ramifications of trafficking syndicates.
The General Assembly of the International Criminal Police Organization
The twenty-seventh session of the International Criminal Police Organization General Assembly was held in London from 5 to 19 September 1958. As usual, the Assembly appointed a special committee to deal with the question of narcotic drugs. The Assembly adopted two resolutions on the subject of the illicit traffic. It noted that the illicit drug traffic had not decreased, and that the results obtained in the struggle against it had not been satisfactory; it felt that the struggle against traffickers could be reinforced by exchanging and comparing information on the methods used by the traffickers and on the new methods and techniques used by departments dealing with the suppression of this traffic. In view of these facts, the first resolution asked the countries and territories affiliated to the ICPO to send to the General Secretariat as much information as could be gathered from codes used by traffickers; it requested the countries affected by the international drug traffic to send the General Secretariat information which might help to suppress this traffic, and considered that in future the greatest possible number of such countries should be represented on the Committee on Drugs of the International Criminal Police Organization. The Assembly, in a second resolution, requested the Secretary-General of the International Criminal Police Organization to take the necessary steps to organize in Asia a regional meeting of the services concerned with the suppression of the illicit drug traffic in the Far East, and urged all the countries in this part of the world to send qualified representatives to that meeting.