Geisha Kow­lessar

Head of West­ern Po­lice Di­vi­sion, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, col­lapsed in her of­fi­cial po­lice ve­hi­cle while on her way to her St James of­fice on Thurs­day. How­ev­er, the mat­ter has raised con­cerns from the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion which said the in­ci­dent was trig­gered when Jen­nings-Smith was re­peat­ed­ly be­rat­ed by one of her se­niors in the pres­ence of oth­er of­fi­cers dur­ing a meet­ing just be­fore noon. Al­so present in the meet­ing was ACP (East) Si­mon Alex­is. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, has called on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to probe the mat­ter.

He said in­for­ma­tion reach­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion was that Jen­nings-Smith re­peat­ed­ly asked the se­nior of­fi­cer to stop be­rat­ing her in front of oth­er of­fi­cers but her pleas were ig­nored. But oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers, who were present at the meet­ing, said it was the oth­er way around and the se­nior of­fi­cer was sim­ply per­form­ing his du­ty by point­ing out flaws and mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed, aimed at im­prov­ing the West­ern Di­vi­sion. They said the mat­ter al­so was re­port­ed and an of­fi­cial com­plaint was made at the In­ter­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice by Jen­nings-Smith. Sources said she al­so was giv­en seda­tives to help her calm down and was rest­ing at home yes­ter­day.

Jen­nings-Smith, who met with ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion over the week­end, said she was pre­pared to throw in the tow­el and walk away from the Po­lice Ser­vice. Rame­sar said he as­sured her she was a good of­fi­cer and ad­vised her to re­main with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. "I as­sured Ms Jen­nings-Smith the as­so­ci­a­tion would lend its sup­port," Rame­sar said. He added she was on the brink of tears and ap­peared un­hap­py with some of the chal­lenges she was en­coun­ter­ing in the West­ern Di­vi­sion. Rame­saar added: "It al­so ap­peared to me that she was not get­ting the sup­port of some of­fi­cers at the West­ern Di­vi­sion.

"Ms Jen­nings-Smith al­so told us she be­lieved the 21st Cen­tu­ry Polic­ing Project would work suc­cess­ful­ly." He said it seemed even more stress was placed on her since it ap­peared that the West­ern Di­vi­sion was not get­ting the nec­es­sary equip­ment need­ed. Sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers in the West­ern Di­vi­sion, when in­ter­viewed yes­ter­day, said they al­ways were will­ing and pre­pared to work along­side Jen­nings-Smith. How­ev­er, they said there had been some strain in the work­ing re­la­tion­ship among some of­fi­cers. "We want to work with her... when we do our work suc­cess­ful­ly she will look good but there must be a gen­er­al ap­proach by all in­volved to have a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship, one se­nior of­fi­cer said yes­ter­day.