Interpol

     Last weekend, I was relaxing watching T.V., when I came across the movie "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li." At the beginning of the film, a man comes to a crime scene of a murder, and the woman who works for the local police force isn't happy to see him since she doesn't like that fact that Interpol is crashing their party. Then, I was starting to think about: What exactly is Interpol? Interpol is actually another name for International Criminal Police Organization, which is an intergovernmental organization facilitating international police cooperation. It was founded in 1923, and is headquartered in Lyon, France. An interesting fact about Interpol is it's second to the United Nations as the biggest intergovernmental organization by member states. Ironically, even though Interpol represents 98 member countries, it only has about 700 employees. Even though Interpol is located in Europe, the United States is still a member of it. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Interpol fell under Nazi control, and its headquarters were moved to Berlin. However, after World War II, the organization was revived and moved back to France. Here are pictures of Interpol agents and the Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, France.

    Since there are so many countries involved in Interpol, they try to be as politically neutral as possible. their constitution states that they can't undertake activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature. Their work focuses primarily on terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, money laundering, and white collar crime, etc. This is one of more intriguing government agencies that I have researched because I had no idea what it was before looking it up. Also, it has a remarkable history, especially with its association with Nazi Germany. This could be a cool job to do if I wanted to work overseas. I'm glad there is an agency out there that can bring together several countries and put a stop to crime.