My Internship with the Abu Dhabi Police Department
The internship I took this year was at the Abu Dhabi Police Department, which is the most powerful law enforcement in the city of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This agency is currently under the jurisdiction of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Lieutenant General Shiekh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. As an enforcement agency, Abu Dhabi Police Department promotes respect for human rights, equality and honesty.
Dealing with different sorts of crimes and law violations on a daily basis calls for the according level of professionalism, discipline, as well as technological support. And that is what this police department can be particularly proud of, having one of the most sophisticated and advanced technologies, putting it amongst the most high-tech law enforcement agencies around the world.
Starting my internship in May, 2013 I spent 192 hours working in the Crime Investigation Department. As for my work schedule, I had a set of day shifts combine with nights shifts; during my internship I was able to work in several departments:
- Support Services Coordination Section
- Investigative Branch
- Criminal Laboratory of Electronic Evidence
- Branch Security Information
Working with different supervisors in every department I have been to, made it even more interesting and exciting for me.
Among the main duties of the Abu Dhabi Police Department are law enforcement, peace protection, and public safety promotion. But the duties do not end there; fire department and ambulance can also be called via the police department; actually a person in need can ask for almost any kind of help from the department, as there is no such clear differentiation among the services.
As I have mentioned before, during my internship I have attended several departments, among which were:
- the Support Services Coordination section that is in charge of human services
- the Department of Psychology Crimes and Organized Crime Department deal with crimes of the according category
- the Investigative Branch is responsible for solving crimes that do not fall under any of the above mentioned categories
- the Criminal Laboratory of Electronic Evidence copes with high-tech crimes and investigations
- the Security Branch manages public security in police facilities
During the time serviced in different departments I was shadowing different police officers along with observing the execution of their routine duties, while going out to different emergency calls or simply patrolling the city on foot or by riding in an automobile. Completing daily activity logs and other standard paperwork was among my responsibilities too. When doing all of those things I learned a lot about the different duties that officers have and do every single day. I suppose I was professional enough in working with other police officers. Before starting working in the police department, I was asked to keep confidentiality about certain things, keep quiet and be an observer when the officer worked with public; I was taking a lot of notes while I was observing, and these notes did help me in remembering things. After doing that for quite a while, officers did allow me to fill out their reports, after which they would simply finish them on computers and submit them to the management. By doing this I learnt about the description of various police incidents. I could tell I was good at what I was doing there, as more and more work was given to me every day.
Another interesting project that I got a chance to work on was when I went to practice in the Support Services Coordination Section. This branch executes counseling the resources and referrals for domestic violence or violence against women and children crime victims. It turned out to be a greatly challenging department due to the fact, that such crimes are not that in UAE, and it can be very emotional to watch victims being brought in for interviews or experience the trauma caused to the family. During my work, the department was working on an updated list of counseling resources and my duty was contacting people on the list to confirm different information like hours, availability and services offered. It was not hard to do, though it made me feel good helping out with that matter. As for my overall performance at the department I consider it to be above the average level; I was punctual with time and did attend every single shift I had, though it was not easy to get used to constantly changing day and night shifts. Moreover, after night shifts sometimes it was really hard to get enough sleep that usually led to tiredness and dizziness during the whole day.
One of the most exciting departments that I got the chance to work in was the Criminal Laboratory of Electronic Evidence, as I have always been fascinated by forensics-type television programming and the operation of a real computer forensics team. My first impression of this job is that it was a lot more time consuming and way less exciting than in my thoughts, but when it comes to work (prosecuting criminals) this department does make a big difference. When the crime evidence is being erased or destroyed by criminals, experts from this department do an incredible job retrieving it, thus saving the whole case, actually taking it to court. During my time at this department I also started with just helping officers and studying different ways of how the evidence can be recovered. Most of the time we worked with laptops and cell phones, nevertheless all other types of digital gadgets were used. A lot of what we were dealing with was completely out of my competence, but they showed me and taught me how to manage all that work.
Overall, I am confident about the success of my internship in the Abu Dhabi Police Department; it was absolutely informative and will be of great help for my future occupation. It was interesting to be shadow different departments, learning about the actual life as an officer with different duties. I felt that my performance was solid and I feel confident about a positive reference for my experience application. I feel like it was a little hard going in, not exactly knowing what to expect; maybe I could improve my experience by asking for an interview with one or two officers beforehand. I believe I did well and I am really proud of my experience.
