American Samoa has officially opened its Transnational Crime Network center in Fagatogo, which will link up with the Pacific Transnational Crime Network.
Two police commissioners in Center Le'i Sonny Thompson -Am Samoa and Fuiavailili Egon Keil-Samoa. with AFP advisor Phil Eagles. Photo: RNZ/ Monica Miller
The intelligence sharing information network is headquartered in Samoa and co-operates with law enforcement agencies in the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and the United Stated.
American Samoa joined at the invitation of Samoa's Police Commissioner Fuiavailili Egon Keil who said the network now had 16 members.
"To me, personally I think it's a great system because we get to share intelligence, we get to share information we get to communicate now - American Samoa and Samoa. We can really talk about issues between our boarders.
"But not just us, we're looking at the welfare of the whole Pacific, not just our welfare. So it's a great system, it's all funded, it's easy, but the great thing is the sharing of information is really critical in this network. We work together with Us homeland security, the FBI, the office, the office from Hawaii as well."
A week-long training of local police officers in transnational crimes also got underway this morning.
