Pao­lo Ker­na­han

When for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his deputy Jack Ewats­ki were run out of town by our in­sti­tu­tions and civ­il so­ci­ety, I ac­cept­ed that we are com­fort­able with our Gaza-like state of height­ened ten­sion and fear.

De "white­man" couldn't un­der­stand de cul­tear, see? ACP Stephen Williams was swept in­to the com­mis­sion­er's chair on a crest of pre­vail­ing pub­lic sen­ti­ment that "we need a lo­cal man for the job." Af­ter all, this was the man who ought to have been cho­sen in the first place; we were mere­ly cor­rect­ing an er­ror of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion who by­passed Mr Williams for the post.

The com­mis­sion­er took cred­it for a rel­a­tive­ly in­ci­dent-free Car­ni­val, as­crib­ing it to the vig­i­lance of the po­lice (not see­ing in his state­ment that this vig­i­lance would be nice to have year round.) Not long af­ter that, he was made to eat his words as vi­o­lent crime surged on the punc­tu­a­tion of his com­men­da­tions. A beast in hi­ber­na­tion was once again ter­ror­is­ing the land, serv­ing up sev­ered heads and dis­em­bow­elled young women.

It's odd that the same en­mi­ty with which mem­bers of the pub­lic and the Gov­ern­ment pep­pered the Cana­di­ans has re­mained hol­stered for CoP Williams. No one has called for his res­ig­na­tion even though, ac­cord­ing to the stan­dards up­on which Gibbs and Ewats­ki were cru­ci­fied, Williams' tenure thus far has been a spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure.

Re­gard­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ter­ri­ble tragedy at Sea Lots, al­ready the fears of the res­i­dents seem jus­ti­fied. Blood sam­ples of the po­lice of­fi­cer who was dri­ving the death-deal­ing ve­hi­cle were "spoilt"(?!) The po­lice have fur­ther ad­vanced the breath­tak­ing ex­pla­na­tion that it is not cus­tom­ary to ad­min­is­ter a breathal­yser test fol­low­ing a ve­hic­u­lar col­li­sion (al­though you can prac­ti­cal­ly be "breathal­ysed" sit­ting in your car on Ari­api­ta Av­enue on a Fri­day night.)

Par­tic­u­lar­ly un­nerv­ing was the po­lice com­mis­sion­er's re­sponse to re­ports that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is falling apart. In a me­dia in­ter­view he de­fen­sive­ly ar­gued that the mess-up with the blood sam­ple has noth­ing to do with the po­lice ser­vice. This is in­deed true; his tone how­ev­er, con­veyed the lais­sez faire so-it-hang-is-how-it-swing de­meanour that is pre­cise­ly why we are over­run with crim­i­nals.

This brings me to the mat­ter at hand–the De­fence Amend­ment Bill, geared to­wards be­stow­ing sol­diers with the pow­ers of ar­rest and oth­er au­thor­i­ty af­ford­ed to (and po­lite­ly de­clined by) the po­lice. Groups like Fix­in' T&T, mem­bers of the pub­lic and Op­po­si­tion politi­cians have all voiced very strong ob­jec­tion to the bill.

Mean­while, the Gov­ern­ment is ro­manc­ing the In­de­pen­dents in cau­cus. Voic­es have raised con­cerns that this is mere­ly a ploy by the Gov­ern­ment to gath­er un­to it­self forces it can use against its po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. Oth­ers have char­ac­terised sol­diers as "killers" and as such un­suit­able for po­lice work. (Al­though in a re­cent shootout with po­lice, a man went from be­ing a "sus­pect­ed ban­dit" to a "con­firmed ca­dav­er" in very short or­der with nary a com­plaint)

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and GQ front cov­er, Faris Al Rawi, even raised the spec­tre of sol­diers giv­en pow­ers of ar­rest but de­nied the pro­tec­tive shield of the Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion. While elo­quent as al­ways, this was one of the finest ex­am­ples of par­lia­men­tary onanism which is stan­dard fare in that talk tent.

We have pub­lic com­men­ta­tors blow­ing smoke on this po­lar­is­ing is­sue and politi­cians flail­ing their red her­rings every chance at bat. With all of this smoked her­ring be­ing forced down our throats, we've ig­nored the sim­plest and most ob­vi­ous ar­gu­ment against the con­cept–this is di­aphanous sub­terfuge from the Gov­ern­ment, a des­per­ate at-least-we-are-try­ing-some­thing sal­vo de­signed for the Op­po­si­tion to scut­tle and then take the blame for our con­tin­ued free-fall in­to hell.

So here it is: 10,000 sol­diers will not im­prove the de­tec­tion rate of the po­lice ser­vice, 100,000 sol­diers will not cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient man­age­ment struc­ture with­in the ser­vice. If the Gov­ern­ment is con­cerned that mil­i­tary men are be­ing paid to sit down and do noth­ing, giv­ing them pow­ers of ar­rest just means that they will be do­ing noth­ing some­where else.

At any rate, say­ing sol­diers are be­ing paid yet have lit­tle to do is like say­ing fire of­fi­cers are be­ing paid but there aren't any fires. The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem in the po­lice ser­vice has al­ways been in­ept man­age­ment and scat­ter-shot de­ploy­ment of re­sources. Yes, there are good po­lice of­fi­cers de­ter­mined to serve the pub­lic, but if you put a for­mu­la-one race car dri­ver in a Dae­woo rac­er, the re­sults are pre­dictable.

We refuse to con­front the in­ad­e­qua­cies of the po­lice ser­vice, the abysmal in­ves­tiga­tive ca­pa­bil­i­ties and poor de­tec­tion rate. In­stead, it is eas­i­er to throw up the De­fence Amend­ment Bill or re­move du­ties and VAT on im­port­ed CCTV cam­eras. Great! Now the ban­dits can't rob you blind but rob you in plain sight.Stephen Williams' feet must be held to the fire and he in turn must hold his di­vi­sion­al man­agers to ac­count. It is the on­ly way we can ar­rest this point­less de­bate and be­gin ar­rest­ing our down­ward spi­ral.