Rwanda National Police

With the rate at which contemporary crimes evolve in modern societies, police forces have to go digital and use advanced technologies to curb such delinquencies like cybercrimes.

The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Emmanuel K. Gasana urged officers who specializes in Information Communication Technology to consistently conduct research and educate themselves on how to curb new emerging crimes.

IGP Gasana made the remarks on September 6, as he officiated a workshop of 146 Police tech-engineers at the force’s Headquarters in Kacyiru.

The objective of the workshop is to advance e-policing as means to curb advanced felonies like cybercrime.

Cybercrime encompasses any criminal act dealing with computers and network-hacking.

Additionally, cybercrime includes traditional crimes conducted through the Internet. For example; hate crimes, internet fraud, identity theft, and credit card account thefts are considered to be cybercrimes when the illegal activities are committed through the use of a computer and the Internet.

In the modern world, cybercrimes remain the fast-growing area of crime. More criminals are exploiting the speed, convenience and anonymity of the Internet to commit a diverse range of criminal activities that know no borders, either physical or virtual.

“We live is a world that moves so fast in terms of development but this is coming along with new crimes that are cross-border in nature like terrorism, human trafficking and cybercrimes, among others,” IGP Gasana said.

He pointed out that it is paramount for rwanda national police to equip its officers with necessary skills, but challenged them to continuously research to acquire more advanced policing knowledge to keep ahead of criminals.

Rwanda National Police has for long prioritized the use of e-policing.

The traffic related services, online digital forum of crime reporting, reporting a missing person or filing a complaint online, and toll free lines are some of the areas that the force has already gone digital.

RNP deployed IT engineers at district level and plans to deliver other service online for quick response and service delivery.