I in­tend­ed to fo­cus on school vi­o­lence and the many as­so­ci­at­ed is­sues of schools’ man­age­ment, chil­dren’s pri­ma­ry health care, par­ent­ing and par­ent en­gage­ment, dis­ci­pline, and gen­er­al risks in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. But the event in Rich Plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, re­sult­ing in the death of Po­lice Con­sta­ble Clarence Gilkes, is yet an­oth­er dis­turb­ing po­lice/com­mu­ni­ty in­ci­dent.

While al­most dai­ly, one hears ad­verse world­wide re­ports about po­lice ac­tions, that is no so­lace for us here. The TTPS must in­spire pub­lic con­fi­dence, oth­er­wise, we’ll face the con­se­quences of in­creas­ing vi­o­lence and crime and, even­tu­al­ly, so­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty.

Cit­i­zens re­ly on the Po­lice Ser­vice to up­hold the ba­sic tenets of due process. We should trust that it will not rush to con­clu­sions on mat­ters re­quir­ing care and sound judge­ment. That wasn’t the case in the first ut­ter­ings of the Com­mis­sion­er on the death of the po­lice of­fi­cer in the Rich Plain event. He made state­ments about the of­fi­cer’s death in the ab­sence of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Since he wasn’t on the scene, he prob­a­bly re­lied on his of­fi­cers’ re­ports. The au­top­sy throws some light on the of­fi­cer’s death, and in time, the re­sults of a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion should re­veal the truth.

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, “some of the of­fi­cers in­volved in the op­er­a­tion have gone on sick leave,” and they re­port­ed­ly went through a “trau­mat­ic or­deal.” A trag­ic death would be trau­mat­ic for any­one. Still, these are po­lice of­fi­cers on the front line of a haz­ardous oc­cu­pa­tion. Every po­lice mis­sion, es­pe­cial­ly in a so­ci­ety where crime is high, is po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous to life. The Rich Plain event, like oth­er trag­ic ones, is cause for deep con­cern. It must un­doubt­ed­ly be trau­ma­tis­ing for the Rich Plain res­i­dents.

The po­lice hi­er­ar­chy and the pol­i­cy­mak­ers should keep pub­lic trust fore­most on the agen­da as that is the foun­da­tion for po­lice and com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships. If it were on­ly crim­i­nals dis­trust­ing the po­lice, who would care? The dis­trust is wide­spread based on the 2017 Re­port of the TTPS Man­pow­er Au­dit Com­mit­tee chaired by Prof Ramesh De­osaran.

What hap­pened to that re­port? It high­light­ed the trou­bled state of the ser­vice and its in­abil­i­ty “to res­cue it­self.” The com­mit­tee iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant is­sues and made com­pre­hen­sive rec­om­men­da­tions, fo­cus­ing on gov­er­nance, lead­er­ship, dis­ci­pline, cor­rup­tion, pub­lic con­fi­dence, and trust, among oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues. It men­tioned the steady ris­ing of crime and fear of crime and that “law­break­ers seem to be em­bold­ened with the no­tion that there is a good chance of es­cap­ing pun­ish­ment for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. “A low crime de­tec­tion rate and a less than de­sir­able pros­e­cu­tion rate” re­in­forced mis­trust.

What has changed since the re­port? Trans­form­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice is a coura­geous and tena­cious ex­er­cise call­ing for wise, sta­ble (and sta­bil­i­ty of tenure), imag­i­na­tive, and ex­pe­ri­enced lead­er­ship who can ma­noeu­vre through de­bil­i­tat­ing pol­i­tics. Prob­a­bly, the man­age­ment has made progress in im­ple­ment­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions, but it has had four com­mis­sion­ers in 12 years, and on­ly two had sub­stan­tive ap­point­ments. It has had three in the five years since the re­port. The com­mis­sion­er’s salary is among the low­est-ranked in the pub­lic ser­vice—low­er than the head of the Na­tion­al Li­brary and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries.

Quite apt­ly, the theme of the De­osaran Com­mit­tee Re­port was No Sa­cred Cows. In that vein, there should be no shy­ing away from at­tribut­ing to its in­sti­tu­tion­al weak­ness­es, the harm­ful ac­tions and in­ac­tions of suc­ces­sive po­lit­i­cal regimes, and out­dat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al mod­els—no dif­fer­ent from the fac­tors that led to the de­bil­i­tat­ing cul­ture per­vad­ing many pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. It is past time the par­a­digm changes. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the pub­lic will hold the Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.

On bal­ance, the TTPS has made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in com­bat­ing crime. There are, in the ma­jor­i­ty, sol­id and loy­al of­fi­cers ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing us. I be­lieve the lead­er­ship wants to make a pos­i­tive and mea­sur­able dif­fer­ence in the qual­i­ty of polic­ing. On­go­ing projects and good work are hap­pen­ing, which we don’t hear about, and shouldn’t, giv­en the na­ture of po­lice work. Most se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers would have come through the ranks and are there­fore ac­cul­tur­at­ed by its tra­di­tions, val­ues, and rit­u­als. They, in turn, would have brought to bear on its cul­ture their val­ues, at­ti­tudes, and be­hav­iours, con­tribut­ing to its ethos.

Re­cruiters of lead­er­ship tal­ent usu­al­ly place the abil­i­ty to trans­form or­gan­i­sa­tions high on their agen­da. They nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the weight of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture in trans­for­ma­tion­al ef­forts. It is es­sen­tial the ac­tions of the TTPS op­er­a­tional and pol­i­cy-mak­ing lead­ers in­spire pub­lic con­fi­dence.