Camille Clarke

Chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran says the need for po­lice man­age­ment, crime re­duc­tion and pub­lic safe­ty re­quires ur­gent at­ten­tion or the crime sit­u­a­tion will be­come worse. De­osaran was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a sem­i­nar of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain. The com­mis­sion met with key stake­hold­ers.The top­ic of the meet­ing was ti­tled Strength­en­ing Part­ner­ships for Im­prov­ing Pub­lic Safe­ty/Chal­lenges for Re­form. Stake­hold­ers from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs at­tend­ed.

De­osaran said yes­ter­day's meet­ing was the re­sult of am­bi­gu­i­ties and over­laps iden­ti­fied in clar­i­fy­ing the gov­er­nance ar­chi­tec­ture. "The PSC held dis­cus­sions and shared con­cerns in the leg­is­la­tion pro­ce­dures. We have to learn to work to­geth­er close­ly and con­stant­ly be­cause it is a mat­ter of pub­lic safe­ty for the erad­i­ca­tion of crime. We have to work to­geth­er for a com­mon pur­pose," he said. He not­ed that the rate of se­ri­ous crime-kid­nap­ping and mur­der-showed dra­mat­ic in­creas­es be­tween 2004 and 2005. "A spe­cif­ic ques­tion in the pub­lic dis­course was the ex­tent of pow­ers which the Com­mis­sion­er has or should have over the Po­lice Ser­vice. It was felt both with­in and out­side the Po­lice Ser­vice that while the Com­mis­sion­er had re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and was held ac­count­able for po­lice per­for­mance, the Com­mis­sion­er had rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle pow­er over the man­age­ment of the Ser­vice and its of­fi­cers," De­osaran said.

He said the new pow­ers of the Com­mis­sion­er was laid out in the amend­ed Sec­tion 123 where he now has "com­plete pow­ers to man­age the Po­lice Ser­vice and is re­quired to en­sure that the hu­man, fi­nan­cial and ma­te­r­i­al re­sources avail­able to the Ser­vice are used in an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive man­ner." Re­fer­ring to Gibbs' per­for­mance dur­ing the past year, De­osaran said the Sec­re­tari­at which was re­spon­si­ble and an au­dit a team of eval­u­a­tion were now en­gaged in that ex­er­cise. "Soon they will pro­duce a re­port for de­lib­er­a­tion," he an­nounced. De­osaran said there was need for a re­view of the po­lice re­form leg­isla­tive pack­age that was passed in Par­lia­ment in 2006 and 2007.

"Both par­ties pledged and agreed to have a re­view of the leg­is­la­tion with­in a year or two. The time has come and it is over­due," he said. De­osaran said three weeks ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Min­is­ter John Sandy and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan met with the Com­mis­sion and a joint agree­ment was reached to es­tab­lish a Re­view Team to look at the leg­isla­tive and op­er­a­tional frame­work of the com­mis­sion.