Det.Supt. Neville Blackwood (retd.) MSc FCMI
Special Advisor - Police and Overseas Liaison
Neville has a Masters Degree in International Policing and is a former senior police officer with most of his 30yr service spent as a Detective investigating and managing serious organised crime and major crime incidents.
The last 3 years of his police career was on secondment as Detective Superintendent Police Adviser to the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London with the Consular team. There he played a pivotal role in cross-government decision making with international partners particularly in highly sensitive areas such as murder, kidnap and missing persons as well as the UK response to worldwide crisis incidents such as terrorism, natural disasters and major accidents involving British nationals.
He is an experienced police Senior Investigating Officer and regularly delivers training and mentoring in the UK and around the world. to senior police officers on all matters concerning international law enforcement.
He has extensive experience working abroad academically and on diplomatic missions through the Foreign Office. He has visited over 55 countries across Europe, Africa, the US, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Asia where he has project managed a number of capacity and capability programmes and worked directly with police teams, prosecutors, political representatives, NGOs and other key law enforcement partners.
He has worked at a high level strategic level as the police adviser to the British Embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia and provided extensive training and mentoring to the Somali Police Counter Terrorism Unit. He has worked on behalf of the British Embassy in Morocco and designed and delivered SIO courses for the police and security services there in counter terrorism.
He has delivered training on the investigation of mass rape in war zones to healthcare workers on the border with Syria and in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan supporting UNICEF and child refugees.
Neville had worked with the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights at a cross-Government strategic level on a capacity-building framework for the project tackling serious and organized crime in South Eastern Europe and delivered training on the subject to police, customs and prosecutors in 7 countries across the region.
He has worked as an International Police Adviser working at a high strategic supporting the Government of Pakistan’s leadership of rule of law reforms and improved criminal justice performance particularly around homicide and rape investigations.