Coordination of law enforcement agencies’ activites in the sphere of drug criminality counteraction

Abstract

The article deals with the concepts and forms of coordination of the activities of law enforcement agencies in the field of combating drug crime. It is determined that coordination is important because this activity is done through the concerted efforts of different actors. These include public authorities at various levels, non-state actors repre-senting the interests of civil society, as well as individual citizens through various forms of self-organization of the population that can effectively counteract the illicit trafficking of drugs, provided that their activities are optimally coordinated. However, under domestic conditions, for a long time, it is not possible to make an effective choice of coordinator as a subject, which fully coordinates the sectoral activity of all involved in the process of combating drug abuse of institutions and organizations. Summarizing the material available on this issue, the authors identified certain trends in solving this issue. According to the results of the analysis, an organizational model was proposed, where the role of the coordinator of anti-narcotic activities was assigned to the Interagency Interaction Center in the sphere of combating criminal drug trafficking, which would operate under the Department of Combating Nar-cotics of the National Police of Ukraine. Assessing the role of the prosecutor’s office as an organizer of the fight against crime in general, including criminal drug trafficking, it is stated that this agency is intended to coordinate the activities of all law enforcement agencies in the implementation of their various functions of criminal justice, that is, on a wide range of tasks. The authors emphasize that there is also a need to coordinate search operations as the most effective law enforcement function in the field of combating criminal drug trafficking. The authors consider the National Police of Ukraine Department of Drug Crime to be the optimal working body to ensure coordination of actions of all these operational units of law enforcement agencies, as having in its arsenal strategic and tactical approaches of joint operational work in the sphere of criminal drug trafficking. At the same time, these units will not lose their position as a subject of ARD in the anti-narcotic sphere. It is emphasized that the implementation of the proposed coordination mechanism in the practice of law enforcement agencies in a qualified and professional approach to its application will serve to increase the efficiency of coordination activities, requiring law enforcement agencies to apply modern methods of coordination, correct definition of strategy and tactics of interaction on coun-teraction, counteraction cases of substitution and duplication.