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BASSETERRE, St Kitts (SKNIS) -- Officials charged with protecting the borders of St Kitts and Nevis completed five days of advanced training in deception detection on Friday.

The course, held at the Police Training Complex, was attended by about 30 members of the Royal St Christopher and Nevis Police Force and Her Majesty’s Customs. It was facilitated by Anthony Le Gendre, who specializes in body language, non verbal communication as well as fraud and imposter detection.

He explained the basis behind his field of work.

“Truth and lies are the core of all relationships whether it’s between parents and children, husband and wife, employer and employees and law enforcement and suspects,” he disclosed. “So it is important that people ... be able to identify red flags, things in the behaviour of the person that should be of concern.

“In the workshop, we also [dealt] with the words that people use. So its two things the body language and the words that they use. Both of them can give you clues and cues to deception.”

Le Gendre has studied the topic for 17 years and began lecturing on techniques four years ago. His expertise has been tapped around the Caribbean region and he also collaborated with a number of agencies including the Organization of American States (OAS) on various related projects. Le Gendre had high praise for the local participants attending the deception detection workshop.

“I’ve found that the particular students at this course, they pick up very quickly and I was impressed with that,” he stated, while snapping his fingers to emphasize the point. “I was impressed with their intelligence. I was impressed with their ability to absorb what I was telling them and how quickly they were able to adopt it.”

Woman Police Constable Lisa Daniel, an immigration supervisor at the seaport in Charlestown, Nevis, stated that the course was quite useful.

“One thing which I can say has been an eye opener for me was detecting when persons are telling lies when giving statements,” revealed Daniel, adding that increased vigilance will now follow in the execution of her duties. “Tony has created a monster here. ... Things we used to take for granted and overlooked and never really took time out to focus on, I can sure tell you that from here on out we will be doing that.”

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