Over the years, International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and Open World participants in Northwest Florida whose projects have focused on law enforcement have visited a variety of places, with hands-on site visits and engaging conversations along the way. Our dossier of contacts willing to share their knowledge and talk shop with visitors has grown. From hosting Environmental Law Enforcement for Brazil in 2010 to preparing for a December 2024 project titled Law Enforcement Training for Investigation and Prosecution of Crimes, and all points in between, we have steadily worked to discover the best and the brightest in our region to share with the stellar individuals sent to us via the IVLP and other federal exchanges.
After their initial meeting at Pensacola City Hall, exchange participants engage in conversations focused on police modernization and training, community policing, and best practices in combatting international and organized crime. The Escambia County and Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Offices, the City of Pensacola Police Department, U.S. Marshalls, and the University of West Florida Police Department meet with visitors.
Groups visit crime labs, including the impressive Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab, where some have benefited from a station-to-station look at evidence collection. Do you have an IVLP participant with a niche talent in typewriters or handwriting analysis investigations? We know which law enforcement agency to call for that. The same applies to electronic detection dogs, citizen academies, crowd control, and law-enforcement adjacent forensic science meetings. Ask us about the time we took police from Uzbekistan to breakfast on Halloween at the location of Ted Bundy’s arrest!
IVLP participants visit law enforcement training facilities. A lucky few have even participated in a ride-a-long, which, while rare, is sometimes possible. Site visits to the 9-11 Call Center, programs fostering police-youth engagement, law enforcement responses to mental health challenges, meetings focused on human trafficking, and panels focusing on civilian and military partnership response to emergencies have all been components of past programs. Projects can also include a community coffee, where IVLP participants can share their thoughts in an informal speed networking environment with locals.
