Paul Cook B.A (Law) MSc (Econ)
I have been a member of the British Society of Criminology since the late 1980s and am a practitioner rather than an academic. A former Chief Superintendent with the Greater Manchester Police and I now work as a consultant on policing, crime and drug-related issues.
During my police service, I had experience in a wide variety of activities from operational detective roles to command positions at both strategic and tactical levels. As a Superintendent in the inner city area of Moss Side, Manchester I had the opportunity to implement new initiatives and strategies towards perennial policing issues in the community.
From 1992 until my retirement in 1997 I was responsible for the restructuring and fundamental re-alignment of Community Policing. During this period major initiatives in respect of Crime Prevention; Police involvement in schools programmes; Crimes against vulnerable members of the community were undertaken. I developed the first Police Drug Misuse Strategy in the UK, both in respect of enforcement and demand reduction activities. In 1996/7 I co-ordinated a major drugs supply/demand reduction programme in the Greater Manchester area known as ‘Operation Jigsaw’ and which involved a number of other agencies.
Until my retirement from the police, I was the UK police delegate to the EU Drugs and Organised Crime Working Group and a member of the National Drugs Committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers. As an independent consultant I have worked on behalf of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, UNDP and as an adviser to a number of national governments including the Czech Republic, Belgium and Finland. In 1999 I was commissioned by the Phare Multi-beneficiary Drugs Programme of the European Commission to assess the overall capacity of the 13 Phare partner countries’ law enforcement services in respect of combatting drugs and to develop a strategic tool for the assessment of the process of adoption and implementation of the EU acquis in the field of drugs.
Since that time I have had the privilege of working in and managing projects in over 50 countries including Africa; the Middle East; Central Asia; South America; Eastern Europe and the European Union in places such as Colombia, Turkmenistan, Libya, Estonia and Albania.
I am currently the Chair of the Management Board of the Southern Caucasus Office for Drugs and Crime (SCODC based in Tbilisi, Georgia). Now in the second phase of retirement, I spend my time as a regular speaker on cruise ships and on the Speaker’s circuit in the UK.