Vital police information contained in INTERPOL’s databases from its 186 member countries is to be made directly available to law enforcement officials throughout the United States.
The INTERPOL US National Central Bureau in Washington DC has now provided the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Law Enforcement Support Center (ICE LESC) with direct access to a range of INTERPOL’s databases.
Officers at LESC will now be able to instantly run checks against INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database containing details of more than 15 million documents from 128 countries, the stolen motor vehicles database of nearly four million stolen motor vehicles and the organization’s nominal database of nearly 200,000 individuals wanted internationally.
An essential point of contact for the US law enforcement community, the LESC operates 24-hours a day providing information on the immigration status and identities of individuals under investigation or arrest.
LESC will access INTERPOL’s data via the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS) which connects nearly one million users from 18,000 US law enforcement agencies exchanging more than 50 million messages each month.
“Our goal is to provide direct, international query capability to each federal, state and local law enforcement agency in the United States, and ultimately to the officer on the street, and this connection to LESC directly supports this goal,” said Director of the US NCB Martin Renkiewicz.
Direct query access to INTERPOL's databases has already been provided to US police departments in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami-Dade, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles and most recently, Virginia.
“Providing direct access to INTERPOL’s databases to immigration and national law enforcement agencies is an important step in the prevention of all forms of criminality, including terrorism, and this achievement by the US NCB is a significant one,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble.
“Through INTERPOL channels, officers can access police information provided by law enforcement agencies from each of our 186 member countries which could prove vital in identifying dangerous persons who may otherwise escape detection.”