Clevon Raphael

Did Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, act­ing In­spec­tor Anand Rame­sar, pull a fast one on his boss the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice last week on the swirling con­tro­ver­sy over gov­ern­ment's lat­est at­tempt to get a grip on the spi­ral­ing crime sce­nario in T&T?

Since the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion giv­ing cer­tain se­lect­ed sol­diers the pow­ers of ar­rest to as­sist their po­lice com­rades in the re­lent­less bat­tle with the ma­raud­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ment, Rame­sar and his ex­ec­u­tive have been very vo­cal in their ut­ter dis­taste and dis­like for the mea­sure.

They have been call­ing on their chief, Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, to state his po­si­tion or rather that he should come out against it. I felt Rame­sar and his team was los­ing it with their com­plete­ly non­sen­si­cal de­mand on Mr Williams sim­ply be­cause of the gen­tle­man's of­fice.

Williams is the CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice even though his nomen­cla­ture is Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. His board of di­rec­tors is the gov­ern­ment of T&T as long as he is giv­en a per­fect­ly law­ful di­rec­tive re­gard­ing the "board's" pol­i­cy, he has no choice but to com­ply with a law­ful and le­git­i­mate or­der.So all along I kept telling my­self that Rame­sar was go­ing too far this time and no way could Williams bow to their un­rea­son­able de­mand.

How­ev­er, lo and be­hold to my as­ton­ish­ment and stun­ning dis­be­lief, I read in the Ex­press of March 15, the un­be­liev­able and chill­ing head­line "CoP against De­fence Bill, says Rame­sar." My head was spin­ning out of con­trol; how could the Com­mis­sion­er com­mit such a ter­ri­ble act of de­fi­ance against his em­ploy­ers?

I vi­su­alised all kinds of fall outs in­clud­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Mr Williams and the neg­a­tive domi­no ef­fects on the en­tire so­ci­ety which is al­ready un­der­go­ing all sorts of trau­mas and now hav­ing to add to our long list of woes, most of them the do­ings by op­po­nents of the PP gov­ern­ment.I read the sto­ry at least four times, the open­ing line say­ing em­phat­i­cal­ly: "Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams has spo­ken out and has made it "crys­tal clear" polic­ing should re­main on­ly with­in the po­lice ser­vice.

"As such, in Williams' view, the pow­ers of ar­rest should not be grant­ed to mem­bers of the reg­i­ment as is be­ing pro­posed in the De­fence Force Amend­ment Act," which is the en­abling leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing the army to work even clos­er with their col­leagues in the TTPS in this on­go­ing war with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

The sto­ry added: "This claim was made yes­ter­day by pres­i­dent of the PSS­WA Sgt Anand Rame­sar, fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween Williams and mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tive Build­ing, Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain."At­tempts to reach Williams to con­firm his po­si­tion were fu­tile yes­ter­day."

My fi­nal take on the sto­ry was that now all re­al­ly fall down–the CoP deal­ing the gov­ern­ment such a body blow. But one of my main con­cerns about the sto­ry, be­ing a writer/ed­i­tor for 47 years, was why did the Ex­press rushed to print such a sto­ry with­out get­ting the com­ment of Mr Williams?This was not some rou­tine sto­ry, this is an is­sue which could have caused ir­repara­ble dam­age to the gov­ern­ment's cred­i­bil­i­ty and the poor ex­cuse of say­ing at­tempts to con­tact Williams were fu­tile just did not cut it.

Thank God the sto­ry had a hap­py end­ing when the next day Mr Williams made it abun­dant­ly clear that he was in full sup­port of the mea­sure which was passed in the Low­er House last week. Now I don't un­der­stand the rea­son for what ap­pears to be a de­lib­er­ate mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the views of the Com­mis­sion­er on such an im­por­tant is­sue by the head hon­cho of the po­lice as­so­ci­a­tion.

I heard no apol­o­gy from Rame­sar for that kind of be­hav­iour which left the Com­mis­sion­er no doubt in an em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion no mat­ter how short-lived it was. Per­sons in po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty must set the prop­er ex­am­ple where in­tegri­ty and prop­er lead­er­ship is the key to their func­tion­ing.

As a foot­note, there isn't any­thing that this gov­ern­ment could do to sat­is­fy some cit­i­zens that it is se­ri­ous in at­tack­ing crime. Take this pro­posed leg­is­la­tion for ex­am­ple. Imag­ine so-called ed­u­cat­ed cit­i­zens who oc­cu­py po­si­tions of some im­por­tance are wait­ing to see what Pres­i­dent Car­mona would do with his sen­a­tors (in­de­pen­dent) if they vote for the mea­sure in the Up­per House.

In case you don't know, the Pres­i­dent can­not sanc­tion an in­de­pen­dent or any oth­er mem­ber for vot­ing their con­science in the Up­per House.