The Command and Co-ordination Centre

The Command and Co-ordination Centre (CCC) links the Interpol General Secretariat, National Central Bureaus in all 188 member countries and regional offices. It operates round the clock in all of Interpol’s four official languages and serves as the first point of contact for any member country faced with a crisis situation.

The CCC’s activities centre on three basic functions:

• to determine the priority level of each message received by the General Secretariat and to reply to urgent requests on a real-time basis.
• to co-ordinate the exchange of intelligence and information for important operations involving several countries.
• to assume a crisis-management role during serious incidents, such as terrorist attacks, and to co-ordinate specialised assistance.

The work of the CCC makes full use of a number of services offered by Interpol, including:

• Instant searches of databases of nominal data, stolen motor vehicles, lost or stolen travel documents, fingerprints, DNA profiles, etc.
• Priority issue of Interpol notices
• Fugitive investigative support
• Support and co-ordination of disaster victim identification (DVI) efforts.

There are various other services the CCC provides, including the publishing of Orange Notices, which are used to warn police, public institutions and other international organizations about potential threats posed by disguised weapons, parcel bombs and other dangerous objects or materials. A number of these notices have been issued, including ones related to parcel bombs sent to members of the European Parliament and the devices used in the Madrid train bombings.

The CCC also facilitates additional assistance in co-operation with specialized units at the General Secretariat to make available experts from Interpol or member countries in different fields of police work such as forensic science, DNA, incident management and explosives.

The centre is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by three shifts of teams. Police officers seconded to the General Secretariat from their national administrations act as team leaders. Each team consists of staff members of various backgrounds and nationalities who are fluent in several different languages.