I am sure that, by now, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his deputy Jack Ewart­s­ki would have heard the Trinidad say­ing, "You talk on­ly be­cause you have a mouth," and they could re­late that say­ing to many of the peo­ple with whom they have come in­to con­tact in Trinidad and To­ba­go.The most re­cent of those peo­ple would be Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran, the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion; and at­tor­ney Dana See­ta­hal.How else can one de­scribe the ut­ter­ances of those two in re­cent weeks?

Any­one who has gone to an­oth­er coun­try to do an as­sign­ment where it has been found that the skills and/or the ex­pe­ri­ence to do that as­sign­ment do not re­side in the re­quest­ing coun­try could tell of the mess one finds in these places and can de­scribe the long and ar­du­ous task of get­ting things on even keels.One does these at tremen­dous per­son­al and men­tal ex­pens­es while fac­ing op­po­si­tion from peo­ple with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tions and the coun­try who feel a "for­eign­er" was hired to do the jobs for which the lo­cals are "qual­i­fied" by rea­son of longevi­ty, even if they have had no re­al broad ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence in han­dling the jobs.In the case of Gibbs, es­pe­cial­ly; and Ewart­s­ki; why should we ex­pect them to clean up a mess in six months that we have cre­at­ed over decades? Does any­one re­mem­ber the first town meet­ings these gen­tle­men at­tend­ed and the com­plaints of the res­i­dents?

It must have been clear to them that they had a re­al prob­lem on their hands with an out-of-con­trol po­lice ser­vice. One has to cor­rect that be­fore one can make any re­al strides with the rest of the job.Even be­fore that, every­one-from the Prime Min­is­ter and her At­tor­ney Gen­er­al down-was threat­en­ing Gibbs long be­fore he set foot in this coun­try. Is that any way to treat some­one who is com­ing to your coun­try to help you with your polic­ing mess?They seem not to re­alise that to this day that they need Gibbs and Ewart­s­ki more than those two gen­tle­men need them. Then, there is Ramesh De­osaran who has dis­ap­point­ed me so sore­ly.

When he was ap­point­ed to head the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, I felt Gibbs could have breathed a bit eas­i­er af­ter hav­ing to deal with Nizam Mo­hammed who is "not easy." I thought De­osaran's style, be­ing "dif­fer­ent" from Mo­hammed's, would have seen some calm be­ing re­stored and, per­haps, a bet­ter ap­par­ent re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice com­mis­sion­er. How wrong I was?What was the first thing De­osaran did af­ter he was sworn-in as the chair­man of the com­mis­sion? He talked "tough" and "big" and did so be­cause he has a mouth.

His re­ced­ed po­si­tion the next week sug­gests that some of his fel­low com­mis­sion­ers might have stood tall once again in the face of the ex­cess­es of a chair­man, hence De­osaran's "calm­ing down" speech. How any sen­si­ble per­son could do what De­osaran did as he gal­leried be­fore the me­dia in his first min­utes as the chair­man is be­yond me. On the mat­ter of Dana See­ta­hal's volatile and sense­less com­ments in a Sun­day news­pa­per about Gibbs and his race and of him be­ing a for­eign­er, the less said about them, the bet­ter.Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs: al­low me to apol­o­gise to you on be­half of the right-think­ing peo­ple in this coun­try who can ap­pre­ci­ate the job you have to do.Do not be dis­tract­ed by the ones who talk be­cause they have mouths.

Carl Pierre

Port-of-Spain