Speaker Bios > Sgt. Debbie Bodkin

Debbie Bodkin has been a Sergeant with the Waterloo Regional Police Service for twenty years. She has worked in a variety of areas, including sexual assaults, drugs, homicide and intelligence.

Debbie has had three overseas experiences in Peace Suppport Operations. In 2000, with NATO and the United Nations in Kosovo, she functioned as a Scenes Of Crime Officer working at body exhumation sites and in the morgue during autopsies. In 2004, with the U.S. organization Coalition for International Justice, she travelled to refugee camps in Chad and interviewed victims who had fled from atrocities occurring in their home country of Sudan. The results of these interviews were used by the U.S. State Department to declare what was happening in Darfur as genocide. Also in 2004, with the United Nations Commission of Inquiry for Darfur in Sudan, she worked for three months as an investigator in Darfur, searching out victims, witnesses and suspects of the horrific crimes occurring and interviewing them in order to complete the report for the United Nations. In January 2005, the United Nations Commission report was released and stated that crimes against humanity were occurring in Darfur with some involvement by the Government of Sudan.
 
In 2006 Debbie received two awards: Law Enforcement Professional of the Year from the Ontario Women in Law Enforcement; and the Officer of the Year from the International Association of Women Police. Debbie now regularly speaks at various forums about her experience in Sudan and the continuing plight of the people of Darfur.

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