Local officer polices St Helena

RGP Police Sergeant Louis Baglietto is currently on a 5-week secondment to the St Helena Police Service, where he is assisting in accrediting the local Police and Customs Dog Sections to UK National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) standards.

His deployment came about following an invitation extended by St Helena’s Chief of Police, Trevor Botting, for a UK NPCC accredited trainer to be sent to the island.

Saint Helena is a remote island situated in the South Atlantic Ocean, approximately 4,000 kilometres east of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

It is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and is the second oldest British Overseas Territory (Bermuda is the oldest).

Occupied by the British since 1659, the island became famous when it was selected by the British Government as the place of  detention for Napoleon I of France in 1815 until his death in 1821.

Prior to the opening if the Suez Canal in 1859, St Helena was of vital strategic importance to ships sailing to Europe from the Far East, and in the 19th Century, the island played a huge and largely unrecognised role as a vital refuge for liberated African slaves.