In 1988, Interpol Ottawa came together with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) Foreign Services Directorate to provide a more effective and efficient service to all law enforcement agencies nationally and internationally. Police officers from various agencies across Canada are seconded to Interpol Ottawa to assist in fighting international crime. The network relies on liaison officers stationed in over 20 countries around the world to provide assistance with foreign agencies on matters of mutual interest. The secondments are extremely important to Interpol Ottawa because the majority of the requests they receive are from foreign countries that involve investigations in non-RCMP jurisdictions. The cases involve complicated legal and cultural differences that exist between countries. Understanding a particular country’s legislation is critical when a Canadian police agency needs to detain someone for violating a law that may exist in another country but not in Canada, or when Canadian law enforcement officials need foreign police to help extradite one of their own back home. The staff at Interpol Ottawa’s Operations Center is the first point of contact for officers seeking information overseas or for local police who uncover an international connection. The center is operated 20 hours a day, 7 days a week and manned by 12 regular members. Improvements in technology have helped the center provide information more quickly to law enforcement and enabled investigators to keep pace with fugitives that are on the run. Additional secondments to be added later in 2003 will allow Interpol Ottawa to have broader representation of Canadian law enforcement from coast to coast.