Peter-Martin Meier

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1960, Peter-Martin Meier studied English as well as Spanish Linguistics and Literature at Zurich University. He acquired the Diploma for teaching these two languages at secondary school level.

Parallel to his studies, he followed a - typically Swiss - military career. This enabled him to apply for a job as a scientific collaborator with the Swiss Department of Defence in the early 1990's, where he worked on the concept of "Readiness - Regiments for Quick Deployment" and the operational planning for the Swiss Army.

In 1994 he took a chance and became Head of the Sicherheitsabteilung - comparable to the Gendarmerie - of Kantonspolizei Schwyz, in Central Switzerland. In 1997, he changed to the Kantonspolizei St. Gallen, a much larger police force in Eastern Switzerland, where he became Chief of Traffic Police and Deputy Chief Constable. There he also studied law and passed the exams as Rechtsagent at the Kantonsgericht St. Gallen.

As the Swiss Police Institute was looking for a new director to start on the 1st of January 2005, he saw a possibility to combine his pedagogical knowledge with his experience of defence and policing, to serve the Swiss police in their training. He was appointed in order to re-structure the institute and to lead the re-organisation of Swiss police training - a project which is gradually approaching its end.

In the Swiss Army, he still serves as a Colonel in General Staff in the domain of Operational Training.

Peter-Martin Meier has given many presentations in German, French and English to Swiss audiences and to foreign delegations in Switzerland. He also spoke to the topic of "Product Definition and Activity Based Costing" at the "Improving Policing" conference in Manchester, in 2001, and he presented a new tool for the investigation of traffic accidents at the TISPOL congress in Berlin in 2003.