Is there anyone who approves of Commissioner of Police Dwayne Gibbs? On the evidence of recent statements by Police Service Commission Chairman, Professor Ramesh Deosaran, that number is trending to zero. Deosaran found Gibbs' responses to questions during his assessment to be "sort of disrespectful," after the embattled Commissioner was said to have answered questions with questions of his own about why the PSC needed certain items of information.
The results of what the PSC Chairman described as a "scientifically-designed survey" among senior and junior offices by the PSC revealed that the Police Commissioner's performance was perceived as particularly lacking among junior officers. That shouldn't have come as a surprise to the PSC.
As early as September 2011, after the first year that the new Commissioner of Police was appointed, Sgt Anand Ramesar, president of the Police Service Social and Welfare Association, described the force as being in "the same position we were a year ago and maybe a little worse."
Jacqueline Cheesman, a PSC Commissioner and a member of the subcommittee that assessed the police leadership, has since clarified that Gibbs got a "fair" grade on his recent review, below "satisfactory" and two grades above cellar position in the seven-tier grading system used by the PSC in its evaluation. There have been several clear public gaffes attributable to the CoP, ranging from misplaced metaphors referring to crime as a zoo to recent displays of force during media information requests.
How Gibbs managed to slide from being the top choice for Police Commissioner in an independent evaluation to being the recipient of an effective "C" grade in his first assessment by the PSC is worthy of greater cross-examination and inquiry. It seems unclear whether any kind of interrogation of the working processes of the police leadership is planned by the Police Service Commission, but the apparent collapse in the capabilities of the man who topped all our evaluation criteria for the top cop job can't simply be a matter of a bad selection.
It also seems that Gibbs' Canadian colleague Dwayne Ewatski and even the home grown talent, Stephen Williams, have fared little better in the PSC's evaluation. It's either the entire Police leadership was a bad choice, then, or something is fundamentally wrong with the way we are managing our crime-fighting assets. Dwayne Gibbs doesn't intend to simply slink away in the face of the massed opposition to his management process and style. While Gibbs has clearly failed to woo support by managing upwards or downwards as evidenced by the annoyance of both Deosaran and Ramesar, there's something admirable and feisty in the image of a CoP giving his evaluators some backchat when they ask questions he finds irrelevant.
It has long been a hallmark of police management that there has been a certain measure of deference to political interests in the execution of their duties. Our Canadian Commissioner has evidenced little interest in coddling such constituency focused concerns. Unfortunately, with no one to speak for him in the political directorate or among the rank and file of the police service, the stoic, office-appropriate silence of the CoP has tended to work against his interests.
His public appearances woo no media love, his statements are offered in blunt, unflavoured terms and he offers no backdoor leaks into his thinking or initiatives. Playing the job by the book, Gibbs has found himself with the book being flung at him and no defenders to speak for his efforts since arriving here. Yet there is some positive buzz among more progressive police officers and observers about the commonsense initiatives implemented in limited scope with the 21st Century Policing initiative.
Gibbs has forced a voice into the day to day operations of the Police Service by creating a process that opens regular communication with the public through formal media briefings. The PSC for its part, has a simple choice. Having responded to a public demand for something different in policing, it must now decide whether it can manage a CoP uncowed by its authority or prepare for another two-year, five million dollar search for police leadership. The conversation now; however, seems to have moved from unlike to unfriend on the Gibbs profile.