When the FBI Seeks Extradition…®
INTERPOL AND OTHER FORMS OF MUTUAL ASSISTANCE
Background
If the United States wants to prosecute a person for a transnational crime, it must first be able to find that person.
American local law enforcement officials began looking at ways to cooperate internationally in 1893 by forming the International Association of Chiefs of Police (hereinafter IACP), some 15 years before Congress gave the United States Department of Justice the authority to create the FBI. WILLIAM F. MCDONALD, NAT'L CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFERENCE Serv., Doc. 188876, Changing Boundaries Of Law Enforcement: State And Local Law Enforcement, Illegal Immigration And Transnational Crime Control, Executive Summary 2 (2001) available here. While the IACP is not a direct operational network like that of Interpol or Europol, it serves as a framework for law enforcement leaders to enhance the quality of policing at the international level by exchanging ideas and procedures. Id. at 4. Even so, the clearinghouse of criminal identification records the IACP constructed in 1896 served as the basis of the FBI's record system when it was transferred to the federal government in 1924. Id. at 2.
Today, there are a number of international police organizations that help coordinate the arrest and prosecution of people suspected of violating a transnational crime, Interpol being perhaps the most famous, though nearly half of American police officers don't know of Interpol's existence. Id. at 4. Some lesser-known police organizations include Europol, the Legal Attaché (hereinafter, Legat) system, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Network (hereinafter, LEIU), the IACP, and various Regional Information Sharing Systems (hereinafter, RISSs) such as the Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network (hereinafter, MAGLOCEN). Id. at 3-5..