The grow­ing es­ca­la­tion of crime has as­sumed such pro­por­tions that it has gone be­yond po­lice and po­lit­i­cal con­trol. As a con­se­quence the Gov­ern­ment and the Pres­i­dent have deemed it nec­es­sary and ex­pe­di­ent to de­clare a state of emer­gency in or­der to halt the sav­agery and amoral­i­ty that have be­come so per­va­sive and en­dem­ic in the so­ci­ety. The fac­tors mil­i­tat­ing against the com­pe­tence of the po­lice in their role and func­tion of crime de­tec­tion and law en­force­ment have been the sub­ject of re­view by many com­mis­sions and com­mit­tees of en­quiry since the ad­vent of our in­de­pen­dence, but it would seem that pre­cious lit­tle has been done over the years to en­hance po­lice ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy as guardians of the peace. It is an ir­re­but­table pre­sump­tion of fact that no civilised so­ci­ety can ex­ist with­out the mainte- nance of law and or­der and for this pur­pose there has been es­tab­lished a Po­lice Ser­vice of T&T whose func­tion has al­ways been cir­cum­scribed around crime de­tec­tion, law en­force­ment, and keep­ing the peace and for this pur­pose the po­lice have been giv­en wide dis­cre­tionary pow­ers of ar­rest which have not been giv­en to oth­er cit­i­zens.

More­over, to in­su­late the po­lice from any in­ter­fer­ence in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, all po­lice of­fi­cers rang­ing from a con­sta­ble to the com­mis­sion­er are the ser­vants of no one save and ex­cept the law when ex­er­cis­ing their pow­er of ar­rest. In­deed, so wide and un­lim­it­ed is the pow­er of ar­rest of a po­lice of­fi­cer that no min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment can tell him that he must or must not keep the ob­ser­va­tion of the peace or that he must not ar­rest or pros­e­cute this man or that one. That re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for law en­force­ment lies on him and him alone. He is, there­fore, an­swer­able to the law and the law alone. Con­se­quent­ly, po­lice of­fi­cers en­joy full pro­tec­tion from any au­thor­i­ty in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties and in the en­force­ment of the law. On the oth­er hand, po­lice of­fi­cers en­joy no spe­cial qua­si-ju­di­cial pow­ers or state priv­i­leges and as a con­se­quence they are li­able to be sued for any un­law­ful ex­er­cise of their pow­ers. In the per­for­mance of their func­tions, po­lice of­fi­cers are nat­u­ral­ly ex­posed to the com­mu­ni­ty and are ac­cord­ing­ly ex­pect­ed to be man­i­fest­ly im­par­tial and to act to­wards them as of­fi­cers of the peace.

His­tor­i­cal facts and em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence have es­tab­lished that the po­lice can­not func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly with­out the co-op­er­a­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty but for what­ev­er rea­son the gap be­tween the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty has been grow­ing wider and wider, to the ex­tent that there is now a to­tal lack of trust and con­fi­dence of the com­mu­ni­ty in the po­lice. It is a sine qua non that the po­lice will not be able to con­trol crime with­out the aid and col­lab­o­ra­tion of in­for­mants and an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive in­tel­li­gence net­work. How­ev­er, in­for­mants come from the com­mu­ni­ty and since the re­la­tion­ship be­tween po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty has been at its low­est ever, it is es­sen­tial that ur­gent and fun­da­men­tal steps be tak­en to bridge that gap. Com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing is clear­ly a dy­nam­ic con­cept which every coun­try should seek to nur­ture, fos­ter and de­vel­op as an en­dur­ing so­lu­tion to our crime-rid­den so­ci­eties. As new dy­nam­ic par­a­digms evolve to cope with chang­ing de­mo­graph­ics and to in­flu­ence and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment, so too there should be so­lu­tions to the cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in so­cial dis­or­der and phys­i­cal deca­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the new strate­gies em­ployed by crim­i­nals in the pur­suit of their goals and ob­jec­tives, which in to­day's con­text are fu­elled by the pro­fuse avail­abil­i­ty of drugs.

Bring­ing to­geth­er the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty who re­gard them­selves as foes to­wards each oth­er would not on­ly her­ald the es­tab­lish­ment of a new bond of re­la­tion­ship be­tween the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty pred­i­cat­ed on trust and con­fi­dence, but would al­so be hailed as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary achieve­ment in the area of crime pre­ven­tion. While some ef­forts are be­ing made to pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, it would ap­pear that what­ev­er is be­ing done may be in­ter­pret­ed as noth­ing short of a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise in lieu of a di­rect in­volve­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty with the po­lice. It must be borne in mind that it is the com­mu­ni­ty who, through elect­ed gov­ern­ments, has es­tab­lished a po­lice ser­vice and it is the com­mu­ni­ty con­sti­tut­ing the State who meets the costs of the po­lice ser­vice. It is there­fore the du­ty of both Gov­ern­ment and the po­lice to work in close co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty if the so­ci­ety is to be rid of crime and the avoid­ance of states of emer­gency.

Ken­neth R Lal­la, SC