Den­zil Mo­hammed

Dear Dr Dwayne Gibbs,

I was one of those who were filled with op­ti­mism when you were ap­point­ed as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Like the elec­tion of a new gov­ern­ment, I felt pos­i­tive­ly about the prospect of change in my coun­try since what the coun­try need­ed most was pos­i­tive change. Then I read your let­ter re­gard­ing the search of the of­fice and home of jour­nal­ist An­dre Ba­goo.

In­stead of sim­ply jus­ti­fy­ing the ac­tions of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB) with a rea­soned and dis­pas­sion­ate re­sponse to as­suage the con­cerns of the peo­ple, you en­tered in­to a tirade that was at once in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and de­mean­ing. In do­ing so, you as­sert­ed your­self not as a re­spectable and ca­pa­ble Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice but as a haughty and de­fen­sive man.

Dr Gibbs, I know you're a smart man. I know this be­cause your name is Dr Gibbs. You have a PhD. I don't. But you don't need to ex­plain to the peo­ple the rai­son d'etre of the Po­lice Ser­vice. You don't need to tell us that they're there to "pro­tect the weak and vul­ner­a­ble," that "they are trained and sworn-in to up­hold the law." You don't need to ex­plain to us the val­ue of laws. You don't need to tell us the prin­ci­ples the Con­sti­tu­tion guards. You don't need to fool us in­to con­sid­er­ing po­lice of­fi­cers as "Peace Of­fi­cers."

You don't need to in­sult our in­tel­li­gence. You al­so don't need to re­fer to the ones who un­cov­er the cor­rup­tion your Po­lice Ser­vice can't and who are there to keep you and all oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials in check as "bul­lies...ma­nip­u­la­tors and in­tim­ida­tors." And you don't need to call our way or work­ing "il­le­gal, un­eth­i­cal and ne­far­i­ous." You don't need to ac­cuse us of "pur­pose­ful­ly" ini­ti­at­ing "vi­o­lence and malef­i­cence." You don't need to ac­cuse us of con­triv­ing to at­tain on­ly for our "own self-in­ter­est and ben­e­fit" when the pur­pose of the me­dia is not to em­pow­er it­self but to em­pow­er the peo­ple with in­for­ma­tion. It is a ser­vice on­ly to the peo­ple and the high­er au­thor­i­ty of truth.

Dr Gibbs, I was your biggest fan. I had long felt that some­one from the out­side was bet­ter suit­ed to head our Po­lice Ser­vice and clean up not just its in­ter­nal prob­lems but na­tion­wide crime as a whole. Un­der the stew­ard­ship of gen­er­a­tions of lo­cals, nei­ther had im­proved. And I know that yours has been a most dif­fi­cult jour­ney. I em­pathise with you. A whitey from for­eign com­ing in to lead our cult-like Po­lice Ser­vice? You couldn't have ex­pect­ed it would be easy. What you prob­a­bly didn't ex­pect was the re­sul­tant cir­cum­spec­tion with which your every move was in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Through­out all of your mis­s­peak­ing, ab­sences and lack of of­fi­cial re­port­ing, all of which the me­dia doc­u­ment­ed well, my faith in you was un­de­terred. I had faith in your abil­i­ties to lead the Po­lice Ser­vice out of its cor­rupt, pow­er­less abyss, in your re­spect for the peo­ple of T&T and in your ded­i­ca­tion to your du­ty. To­day, I feel on­ly dis­ap­point­ment. Dr Gibbs, you lead a Po­lice Ser­vice that was ar­guably the weak­est in the world. Un­der your lead­er­ship, there is no sig­nif­i­cant in­di­ca­tion that it is oth­er­wise.

You said we have too many po­lice of­fi­cers and that there is no need for more. With this over­abun­dance of "Peace Of­fi­cers," we rank high­er in mur­ders per capi­ta than the ma­jor­i­ty of coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders by youth. Is 56 mur­ders "de­tect­ed" out of around 350 last year an im­prove­ment? There were few­er mur­ders last year as com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year as a di­rect re­sult of the state of emer­gency. Is this an ac­com­plish­ment for your Po­lice Ser­vice? That the num­ber of mur­ders went right back up to 33 for De­cem­ber, more than the months of Feb­ru­ary, April, May, June and Au­gust?

You said you would clean up the rag­ing cor­rup­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice. It is some­thing I know about very well from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence. But I guess I, like thou­sands of oth­er cit­i­zens, can't talk about it with­out get­ting in trou­ble. The UNDP Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Sur­vey 2010 re­vealed an abysmal 4.6 per cent of peo­ple in T&T have "a great deal of con­fi­dence" in the po­lice to con­trol crime and 11.2 per cent who be­lieve the po­lice "re­spect all cit­i­zens' rights." Both num­bers are the low­est in the en­tire Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

Dr Gibbs, you're a smart man. You have a PhD. I don't. But these facts speak for them­selves. We might like to wine and roll on the ground but we're not a stu­pid peo­ple. We des­per­ate­ly want to live in a safe coun­try. We des­per­ate­ly want to trust our Po­lice Ser­vice. And we des­per­ate­ly want you to suc­ceed in your du­ties.

But your pro­fes­sion­al out­put or lack there­of is now com­pound­ed by your de­meanor and pre­dis­po­si­tion to the pub­lic whom you serve, made clear in the tone and con­tent of that afore­men­tioned let­ter. Your job just got hard­er, Dr Gibbs. You now have to con­vince us all over again.

Sin­cere­ly,

Den­zil Mo­hammed, BA, MS and maybe one day PhD like you.