Geisha Kow­lessar

Spi­ralling crime and in­creased mis­trust in the Po­lice Ser­vice have brought to the fore sev­er­al ques­tions, such as how ca­pa­ble po­lice of­fi­cers re­al­ly are and whether or not the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­al­ly has been trans­formed, as min­is­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice have promised.

Al­most eight years af­ter gov­ern­ment shelled out close to $80 mil­lion to Prof Stephen Mas­trof­s­ki, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is still in dire need of change, said act­ing In­sp Anand Rame­sar, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion. He said de­spite the ac­qui­si­tion of mod­ern ve­hi­cles, tech­nol­o­gy and the es­tab­lish­ment of mod­el sta­tions, the pub­lic's trust in the ser­vice and the de­tec­tion rate were at an all-time low.

The Po­lice Trans­for­ma­tion Project be­gan in Au­gust 2004 and was head­ed by a team un­der the lead­er­ship of Mas­trof­s­ki, chair of the De­part­ment of Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice and di­rec­tor of the Cen­tre for Jus­tice Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment at George Ma­son Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States, the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices web site stat­ed.

Mas­trof­s­ki and his team were as­signed the task of im­ple­ment­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment project, aimed at in­creas­ing the lead­er­ship and man­age­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the Po­lice Ser­vice, so as to en­hance its ef­fec­tive­ness in the fight against crime.Un­der the watch of for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph, five mod­el sta­tions were al­so in­sti­tut­ed in West End, Mor­vant, Arou­ca, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.

The aim was to change the way in which po­lice did busi­ness and to bridge the gap be­tween the po­lice and the pub­lic.

Re­sources

The cur­rent strength of the Po­lice Ser­vice, Rame­sar said, was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,500, with an ad­di­tion­al strength of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Of­fi­cers (SRP). He said the sanc­tioned strength of the ser­vice should be at least 7,000.Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said there were 7,715 of­fi­cers but on­ly about 2,000 were usu­al­ly on du­ty at any time.

Out of the to­tal, Rame­sar said near­ly 100 of­fi­cers had de­grees, adding that with­in the last two years 20 to 30 had grad­u­at­ed as at­tor­neys. Just over half have stayed in the ser­vice. Oth­ers, he said, al­so pur­sued post­grad­u­ate cours­es in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, in­clud­ing man­age­ment.De­spite their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions they have not been placed in suit­able posts but kept in their sub­stan­tive po­si­tions. This, Rame­sar said, was a ma­jor fac­tor which had re­sult­ed in the de­feat of the trans­for­ma­tion process.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said of­fi­cers who have at­tained their de­grees of­ten met much re­sis­tance in be­ing pro­mot­ed and this de­terred oth­ers from go­ing af­ter more qual­i­fi­ca­tions. He said he has per­son­al­ly known of­fi­cers who com­plained of be­ing frus­trat­ed be­cause they were not el­e­vat­ed de­spite gain­ing ad­di­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

"We have of­fi­cers who say they are con­stant­ly faced with a lot of re­sis­tance by se­nior of­fi­cers to be pro­mot­ed af­ter hav­ing earned their de­grees and based on that alone, I don't be­lieve we have enough of­fi­cers pur­su­ing de­grees."I per­son­al­ly know of­fi­cers who have reached as far as their PhDs and re­signed be­cause they have nowhere to go in the ser­vice."

Out of a fleet of close to 1,200 ve­hi­cles, some 300 were al­so not work­ing, Rame­sar said.When Cana­di­an Jack Ewats­ki be­came deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er in 2011, he said the ra­tio of non-work­ing ve­hi­cles was too high.

The 21st-cen­tu­ry plan

Ewats­ki al­so tried to in­tro­duce his own method of trans­for­ma­tion through the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, which was pri­mar­i­ly aimed at restor­ing erod­ed pub­lic con­fi­dence and in­creased mo­bile and foot pa­trols.The plan was pi­lot­ed in the West­ern Di­vi­sion in April 2011, then in­tro­duced to Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and To­ba­go. It saw po­lice spend­ing more time in the field and less in the po­lice sta­tions. Re­tired of­fi­cers were al­so called out to deal with ad­min­is­tra­tive as­pects.

But the ini­tia­tive was scrapped when Ewats­ki and for­mer com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs re­signed a year be­fore their con­tracts ex­pired.Supt Ish­mael David, of the West­ern Di­vi­sion, said in a re­cent tele­phone in­ter­view that two main as­pects of the plan have been kept–the Prop­er­ty and Case Man­age­ment Sec­tions.The Prop­er­ty Sec­tion saw all ev­i­dence be­ing stored at one po­lice sta­tion, while man­age­ment dealt with all the pa­per­work deal­ing with court cas­es be­ing housed at two po­lice sta­tions.

Bet­ter man­age­ment still need­ed

Be­tween 2005 and 2010 the Po­lice Ser­vice un­der­went tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in train­ing, said for­mer ju­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Don­na Cox.She said dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the Po­lice Train­ing Col­lege in St James was re­fur­bished and re­named the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my. Aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions for join­ing the po­lice were raised from three O-Lev­el pass­es to five. In 2007, she said, the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) was al­so es­tab­lished to col­late sta­tis­tics prop­er­ly.

Cox said a host of ad­di­tion­al sub­jects were al­so in­tro­duced, in­clud­ing ba­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion skills, court room in­ter­view tech­niques, use of force and crime scene tech­niques.But what was sore­ly lack­ing in the trans­for­ma­tion process was man­age­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty.Too of­ten, Cox said, of­fi­cers in man­age­ment po­si­tions were not suit­able for the job.

"We def­i­nite­ly need to see greater man­age­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the Po­lice Ser­vice be­cause if there is in­creas­ing crime in a par­tic­u­lar di­vi­sion, some­one must be held ac­count­able. We can­not have peo­ple who are just lax."Trans­for­ma­tion, Cox em­pha­sised, was grad­ual and could not take place overnight.Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so agreed greater ac­count­abil­i­ty was need­ed.

"With­out in­ter­nal gov­er­nance of the Po­lice Ser­vice there can be no ef­fec­tive ex­ter­nal gov­er­nance of the ser­vice. In­ter­nal gov­er­nance re­quires man­age­ment of the po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tion and the tech­nolo­gies it em­ploys."He said top-lev­el man­agers of­ten spent most of their time at head­quar­ters rather than in the field ob­serv­ing and over­see­ing the work of their sub­or­di­nates.

Say­ing the low de­tec­tion rate con­tin­ued to pose a prob­lem in im­prov­ing po­lice ef­fi­cien­cy, Seep­er­sad said one rea­son could be the back­log at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James."Es­pe­cial­ly with bal­lis­tic cas­es, which take very long and this is some­thing which must be looked at. An­oth­er rea­son could be the lev­el of in­tel­li­gence gath­ered to make a suf­fi­cient break­through in a case."

Min­istry: Po­lice on pos­i­tive road

Di­rec­tor of Law En­force­ment of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry Kei­th Re­naud says the Po­lice Ser­vice has evolved and con­tin­ues to evolve in­to a dy­nam­ic, ef­fi­cient en­ti­ty with com­mit­ted of­fi­cers.He said of­fi­cers have been ex­posed to ex­ten­sive train­ing in Eng­land in dif­fer­ent as­pects of law en­force­ment."We added the Cy­ber Crime Unit, and in that area of­fi­cers have al­so re­ceived ex­ten­sive train­ing.

"Trans­for­ma­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice is con­tin­u­ous and we have achieved a great deal. We will al­so be rolling out a new ini­tia­tive with­in the com­ing months to make the E999 rapid re­sponse sys­tem more ef­fi­cient."

Ma­jor changes:

Seep­er­sad iden­ti­fied and analysed sev­er­al ma­jor changes which oc­curred with­in the last ten years and what was still need­ed:

1. More ad­min­is­tra­tive pow­er was giv­en to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP). He now has greater con­trol over hir­ing, fir­ing, dis­ci­pline and train­ing and more con­trol over bud­getary mat­ters. The CoP was al­so freed from the oblig­a­tion to pro­mote based on se­nior­i­ty and could pro­mote those of­fi­cers/man­agers who showed the most promise in help­ing to bring about re­form in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

2. The Gov­ern­ment's ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide pol­i­cy di­rec­tion has been en­hanced. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry has in­creased the num­ber of pro­fes­sion­al staff, in­clud­ing peo­ple with law en­force­ment ex­per­tise and oth­er per­son­nel in le­gal mat­ters, fi­nance, pro­gramme de­vel­op­ment, tech­nol­o­gy and re­search and eval­u­a­tion.

3. Po­lice Ser­vice is more ac­count­able and there is in­de­pen­dent over­sight of the func­tion­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty. The com­mis­sion has a fo­cus on per­for­mance and it serves as a "watch­dog" over the Po­lice Ser­vice. The com­plaints au­thor­i­ty has the ca­pac­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate se­ri­ous com­plaints in­stead of mere­ly mon­i­tor­ing the progress of in­ter­nal po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­leged po­lice mis­con­duct.

4. The Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tut­ed a Crime and Jus­tice Com­mis­sion com­pris­ing ex­perts in a range of rel­e­vant ar­eas, as well as Op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The pri­ma­ry func­tion of this com­mis­sion is to eval­u­ate the pub­lic's per­cep­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice and make rec­om­men­da­tions to help im­prove the le­git­i­ma­cy of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. The aim is to re­duce/elim­i­nate the "neg­a­tive" ways the po­lice deal with the pub­lic.

5. With re­spect to ef­fec­tive tech­ni­cal man­age­ment there is the need to stan­dard­ise the way da­ta is col­lect­ed and im­ple­ment ap­pro­pri­ate train­ing to en­sure prop­er da­ta man­age­ment. Time­lines in record­ing is al­so an is­sue as this ob­scures crime pat­terns which could form the ba­sis for polic­ing de­ci­sions.

Mas­trof­s­ki rec­om­men­da­tions

Cre­ate a func­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion based on mer­i­toc­ra­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty for per­for­mance, ra­tio­nal and ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing, ef­fec­tive in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Un­der this head­ing there were eight rec­om­men­da­tions:

�2 over­haul the Po­lice Ser­vice per­for­mance ap­praisal sys­tem

�2 shift the pro­mo­tion sys­tem from strict­ly se­nior­i­ty to mer­i­toc­ra­cy

�2 im­prove the way com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers are processed, in terms of fair­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy

�2 de­vel­op a more re­li­able da­ta man­age­ment sys­tem to al­low for in­formed de­ci­sion-mak­ing on staffing and oth­er strate­gic is­sues

�2de­vel­op ev­i­dence-based man­age­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty

�2 cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al, prop­er­ly staffed pub­lic af­fairs unit

�2 ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance

�2 im­prove the sys­tem for ve­hi­cle fleet ac­qui­si­tion and man­age­ment

On pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Mas­trof­s­ki rec­om­mend­ed:

�2 im­prove the in­tegri­ty cli­mate through­out the Po­lice Ser­vice

�2 im­prove the qual­i­ty of re­cruit train­ing

�2 im­prove the qual­i­ty of in-ser­vice train­ing

�2 im­prove su­per­vi­sion and man­age­ment through high-qual­i­ty in-ser­vice train­ing

�2 im­prove lead­er­ship at the top, with the as­sis­tance of an ex­ter­nal ex­ec­u­tive ad­vi­sor

�2 es­tab­lish a com­mand col­lege to pro­mote pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment through high­er ed­u­ca­tion, so as to pre­pare them for su­per­vi­so­ry and man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions

�2 in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty for strate­gic crime con­trol