St. Kitts and Nevis: Police-Media Workshop

There was a lot to talk about when police officers and journalists met in St. Kitts last week during a three day Embassy-supported program on police-media relations.

Community walk-through with Stephen Davis

The U.S. Embassy brought in American speaker Stephen Davis, a former captain with the New York Police Department, to help police and media in relationship building and mutual cooperation.

Davis, who spent over 20 years with the NYPD, was the Police press information officer from 1987 to 1991, a time when New York City was at the tipping point of a notorious crime wave.  As one officer in St. Kitts noted, Davis has “walked the walk” when it comes to managing police-media relations.

During his presentations, Davis went through the ‘ABCDEF’ of fostering good police-media relations: access, briefing, credibility, dialogue, explanation and follow-up.

The program was attended by a wide range of law enforcement officials from the police, customs and immigration departments, as well as senior journalists and editors from several media houses.

The culmination of the program was a community walk-through in Newtown and Frigate Bay by the police and other officials which was covered by several local media houses.