Many of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion's ap­point­ments to state boards and statu­to­ry agen­cies have been found want­i­ng be­cause of a ten­den­cy to over­step bound­aries, in­ap­pro­pri­ate ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures and a fail­ure to em­bark on the changes promised in the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.

Among the ex­cep­tions has been Gillian Lucky, the for­mer MP, an ef­fec­tive and en­er­getic di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, a body es­tab­lished by statute in 2007 as a re­sult of many years of com­plaints about the lack of ef­fec­tive­ness of the pre­vi­ous sys­tem.

Un­der the for­mer au­thor­i­ty, the com­plaints re­lat­ing to po­lice of­fi­cers were sub­mit­ted to the Po­lice Com­plaints Di­vi­sion of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, which in­evitably led to con­cerns about the abil­i­ty of the po­lice in a coun­try as small as this one to car­ry out in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions on their col­leagues.

The struc­ture of the cur­rent PCA al­lows en­quiries to be done by the body's own in­de­pen­dent team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors. This is a def­i­nite ad­vance be­cause po­lice are gen­er­al­ly re­gard­ed as be­ing all too will­ing to pro­tect their own when it comes to of­fences com­mit­ted by the mem­bers of the ser­vice. This means that the job of di­rec­tor of the PCA comes with a cer­tain mea­sure of struc­tur­al in­de­pen­dence.

But over and above that, Ms Lucky has brought to the job the per­sis­tence and feisti­ness she demon­strat­ed as an MP and as a lawyer in both pri­vate and state prac­tice.She has per­sist­ed even in the face of the bla­tant foot-drag­ging and file-dis­ap­pear­ing tac­tics em­ployed by some po­lice of­fi­cers when they are re­quired to pro­vide ev­i­dence against one of their own.

In do­ing so, Ms Lucky ap­pears to be lead­ing the PCA to a new, proac­tive role, with some of the body's in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­sult­ing in charges be­ing laid af­ter her in­ter­ven­tion. The on­go­ing cas­es in­volv­ing deaths at Sea Lots and in Bar­rack­pore are il­lus­tra­tive of this new role.She has al­so used her ini­tia­tive to start a very ac­tive out­reach pro­gramme, which is un­usu­al for a body of this na­ture, to make sure that peo­ple are bet­ter in­formed about the role and work of the PCA, mak­ing it more ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

This is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant in view of the fact that the num­ber of com­plaints about ex­ces­sive use of force by the po­lice has been in­creas­ing. Such trans­paren­cy can serve to as­suage the de­struc­tive cyn­i­cism that has caused many peo­ple to be­lieve that po­lice of­fi­cers can lit­er­al­ly get away with mur­der.

If the fight against crime is to suc­ceed, it is cru­cial that the pub­lic re­pose trust in the po­lice. They are more like­ly to do so if they know that com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers who break the law will be han­dled se­ri­ous­ly and in­ves­ti­gat­ed swift­ly, thor­ough­ly and im­par­tial­ly, and there will be con­se­quences for the of­fend­ing of­fi­cers.

In re­cent re­ports, Ms Lucky has made the point that the work of the PCA would be even more ef­fec­tive if the body had more teeth and greater buy-in from the high com­mand about the se­ri­ous­ness of their task and its im­por­tance.For all these rea­sons, the Gov­ern­ment should take care­ful note of Ms Lucky's call for the au­thor­i­ty to be giv­en more re­sources and more in­ves­tiga­tive and le­gal pow­ers.