It's hard to imagine what kind of reaction Police Service Commission chairman Nizam Mohammed was hoping for when he put the bluntly inflammatory statement before the Municipal and Service Commissions Joint Select Committee (JSC) that the racial profile of the Police Service's leadership was imbalanced.Mohammed unsettled the JSC membership as well as members of his own team of presenters when he offered the suggestion on the floor.Health Minister Therese Baptiste-Cornelis put it succinctly when she admitted that she was uncomfortable with the use of ethnic classifications in a discussion about job descriptions.
Opposition Senator Shamfa Cudjoe wondered whether Mohammed was advocating some type of affirmative action effort in the Police Service.So is Nizam Mohammed a seer of insight on this matter, a bold champion of equal rights in the police service for all nationals of Trinidad and Tobago or a man who has simply pointed out the obvious?
It is no secret to anyone who has viewed Police Service press conferences that an overwhelming number of citizens of African descent comprise the leadership of the law enforcement body. In offering an enumeration of that commonly understood fact, the PSC Chairman has made a useful point about racial imbalance in Trinidad and Tobago's police service.That there are no East Indians in the police leadership until the fourth rank of management, that of Superintendent, where every third officer is identifiably, one presumes, of East Indian descent, is surely something that should be of some concern to police management.
Still, the PSC Chairman failed to engage a deeper discussion that might have sought to make it clear whether that imbalance runs throughout the Police Service.The evidence of one's eyes might have made it common knowledge that the senior ranks of police leadership, except for two recent Canadian imports, is entirely of African descent, there is no clear or common understanding or statistical evaluation of the representation of East Indian officers in the police service at large.
To suggest that law enforcement might be hampered at the level of street policing by a general lack of confidence in the breadth of representation by East Indians in the police service is simply to engage in dangerously provocative speculation. Not bothering to frame the statement in the context of a need for a proper social study of racial representation and it's impact if it holds true is simply reckless. A conversation at the level of a Joint Select Committee should not proceed on the basis of thoughts and feelings that may well have arisen from complaints and concerns offered to the PSC chairman by Indo-Trinidadian officers, including, apparently, the head of the Police Service Association, Sgt Anand Ramesar, about their promotion prospects in the service.
Matters of race and profiling in Trinidad and Tobago are important enough that they deserve serious evaluation and consideration before they are articulated in as public a forum as a JSC meeting and when such a matter is deemed important enough for public consideration, it should proceed with clear investigative and rehabilitative measures as part of the context of the discussion.Everyone present at Friday's JSC meeting with the PSC chairman might have been happier if he had come with an area of concern and some strategies that the members present could agree were worthy of putting into motion.
It will have escaped no one's notice either that there are also few Trinidad and Tobago citizens of European, American or Asian descent at work in the police service at any level and that may point to greater deficiencies in the Police Service as an employment opportunity that are also worth reviewing.It shouldn't be necessary to point out the importance of common sense procedure and solutions-based approaches in as sensitive a matter as race to an experienced former politician like Nizam Mohammed, so the nation should expect more aggressive focus on actionable suggestions in future reports from the Police Service Chairman.