In 1990, Dr. Ronald Pope, President of Serendipity and Illinois State University Associate Professor of Russian politics, initiated the first contacts between the ISU Criminal Justice Department and the ISU Police Department and law enforcement professionals in Vladimir, Russia. (Vladimir is Bloomington-Normal's Russian Sister City.) This developed into a number of visits and exchanges, including the team teaching of a course at ISU on Russian law enforcement by Dr. Frank Morn (Professor of Criminal Justice at ISU) and Major (now Colonel) Vladimir Sergevnin, head of the social sciences division at the Vladimir Juridical Institute (formerly the Vladimir Special Militia School) in spring 1993. In turn, Dr. Morn has lead 2 groups of ISU faculty and students on trips to Vladimir organized by Serendipity and is planning a third trip for this coming May. (A video was made of the May 1996 trip by two ISU television production students who were participating in an internship through Serendipity....)

In the spring of 1994 the first two Russian officers attended the University of Illinois Police Training Institute (PTI) under the sponsorship of Stanard and Associates (a Chicago-based consulting firm), PTI, and Serendipity. These were Senior Lt. (now Captain) Anna Korovina and Major Alexei Grigoriev. They returned to the militia training school in Vladimir that June where they helped implement a number of changes in the academic program based on what they had learned in Illinois. These included adding a course to the school's curriculum on American law enforcement training and procedures (they spent time with four different Illinois police departments after their training at PTI), physical testing, and psychological screening of applicants for their program. (In January 1997, with assistance from Dr. Pope, Capt. Korovina returned to Illinois to team teach the previously offered course on Russian law enforcement, again with Prof. Morn, and to help complete work on a textbook begun by Dr. Morn and Col. Sergevnin on the changes in Russia's criminal justice system--which is now scheduled for publication. The semester was very productive. At the end of May Capt. Korovina was invited to visit law enforcement facilities in Georgia and Chicago and was offered the opportunity to return to the U.S. for additional work in her field of psychology. She will be returning in January to teach at PTI.)

In summer 1996 Sr. Lt. Boris Agapitov and Capt. Alexandr (Sasha) Simkin attended the U. of I. Police Training Program, this time under the sponsorship of PTI, the Vladimir-Canterbury Sister City Association of Bloomington/Normal (Illinois), and Serendipity. (They spent five weeks after their 12 week program at PTI with Illinois law enforcement agencies.)

In Spring 1998 two more officers, Sr. Lt. Andrei Klementiev and Capt. Yuri Nikonorov took part in the program with assistance from a U.S. State Department grant. Capt. Klementiev is on the staff of the Juridical Institute and Lt. Nikonorov was filling the new position of public relations officer for the Vladimir City and Oblast (regional) militia offices. Two more officers will participate in the this project early in 1999, again with assistance from Serendipity.

In general, in addition to initiating the exchanges, Serendipity's role in this program has been to help screen Russian participants, provide them with instruction through its English Program at the American Home in Vladimir, and to take primary responsibility for initial communications and other details involved in the exchanges prior to the participants arrival in the U.S. Others, particularly the staff at PTI and in the various host police departments, have done the direct work in making local arrangements and have provided the professional training. (Dr. Mick Charles, Director of the U. of I. Police Training Institute, and Chief Ronald Swan of the ISU Police Department, both of whom took part in the first exchange in 1991, have played major roles in this program, as have Dr. Charles' assistants, Lois Welling and Joan Schwallier, who have made most of the arrangements for the PTI participants here in the U.S. Dr. Thomas Ellsworth, Chair of the ISU Criminal Justice Sciences Department, and, of course, Dr. Frank Morn played key roles in Capt. Korovina's most recent visit.)

This program, which was the first of its kind in the U.S., has been identified as a prototype for local initiatives in providing concrete assistance to Russian public safety organizations. Serendipity is proud to have played a key role in initiating and sustaining this effort.

Sponsored by:
Center for Civil Society International

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