With Jack Warner's accession to the National Security Ministry, I'm sure people will be slinging crime plans at him-arming the population, brown-shirted storm troopers, helicopter gunships shelling selected areas. All tempting, but what about a simpler plan, involving the TTPS, cell phones and shame, which might yield immediate results?
It starts with the TTPS, where a huge part of the crime problem resides. The murder detection rate is below ten per cent. They openly fight the commissioner much harder than they fight crime. Listen to cops speak to each other, you realise the TTPS is like a medieval guild: loyalty to other police comes before the public. And there are crucial unacknowledged issues stemming from sometimes dubious individuals wielding awesome, unchecked power over defenceless citizens.
From the chaotic front it presents, it's clear that the TTPS, like all institutions in crisis, is concerned primarily with its own survival. This wasn't always so. The Express front page of February 1, 1998, announced public confidence in the police had risen. Crime was down.
Then the PNM came in three years later, and by 2008 the defining image of the TTPS was its commissioner attending an illegal PNM rally in Woodford Square grinning bemusedly. Today, the crisis manifests in many ways, but a crucial mani-festation is through the TTPS's communication with its clients-specifically, in police stations, when people report crimes, and the police response. I was able to see this up close when I had oc-casion to go to a police station about four times in one week last year.
Each time, I was struck by many officers' communicative deficiencies, and sometimes hostility, and their effect on the public. I noticed that many people had serious problems which the police could solve easily (by intervening in disputes or issuing stern warnings), but did nothing about, and I saw victims leave the police station worse off.
Examples: A man says the rude boys on the block harassed his 15-year-old daughter. He told them to stop, they showed up at his gate with guns, saying they'd kill him, and take his daughter. Police response (I'm paraphrasing): "We busy now. But if dey kill you, we go arres' dem."
Or the man who came to the station with three children, in what looked like pyjamas, saying their cocaine-addicted mother had been to the police and said he (the husband) beat her, and she was coming with her gangster boyfriend to take the children. He'd brought the children with him, and their grandparents, to confirm his story. Prima facie, there was a good chance this was true.
Police response: "Wha you woh police to do 'bout dat?" And so on. Robbery, threats, domestic violence filed in, and had their trauma increased. And potential offenders, unchecked, very likely ratcheted up their activities to actual crimes. As for my problem, after three sessions with the desk cops and no action, I asked to speak to the senior officer. He saw me within 15 minutes. I explained my issue to him. He made a phone call, and an hour later, my problem was solved. Good for me.
But this should be how everyone is treated. From that experience two things seem clear: one, many small disturbances ignored by the police metastasise into big crimes; and two, the TTPS is capable of functioning efficiently, but is stopped by the atmosphere of recalcitrance, especially in the lower levels of the service.
This is a reflection and repetition of larger symbolic dramas, like the police association's and PSC's "resisting" the commissioner, seemingly intent on firing him at all costs, for no good reason, and apparently without consequences. This perverse attitude to duty manifests at all levels, like in the wilful misunderstanding of desk officers who communicate with the public, who either see those interactions as opportunities to assert personal power over the victims, or for frustrating victims into going away. And then the citizens have no recourse but to defend themselves, or become statistics.
Then the police arrive. There is a way to solve this: give citizens the right to video-record their interviews with the police on cell phones or cameras. Set up cameras in police stations for corroboration. Thereafter, if reports bring no action, crime victims could use those recordings as evidence of police dereliction.
If the authorities refuse to act, the next step is "naming and shaming"-posting on a YouTube channel, open to media and public. To achieve this might require a change in the rules governing police procedures, or it might even require legislative changes, which I doubt would be too onerous.
Naturally, it's not foolproof. One, I assume shame will work, by no means a safe assumption. Some people want to be seen as deviant-if you mad, you safe. And when no one is held swiftly and publicly accountable, this seals the triumph of perversity. Then there's also the fact that the simplicity of this idea might be self-defeating. It doesn't involve government contracts to "train police in communicative skills" and so on.
But it's clear that police know right from wrong when it comes to dealing with the public. Their choosing to ignore the public's reports is really a root cause for much crime, since criminals know no one is coming to save the victim. I'm willing to bet that the more domestic and small-fry stuff the police deal with (known in real countries as "anti-social behaviour") the more the big-crime numbers will drop.
The really hard part will be making sure there are actual consequences for deviance, and no side-stepping, hiding behind the rules, and evasion. If Mr Warner can get that done, he will have won. And it all starts with recording interviews. It worked for Rodney King.