Geisha Kow­lessar

The im­age of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has tak­en quite a bat­ter­ing in re­cent times.Last Thurs­day, sev­en of­fi­cers ap­peared in court on mur­der charges and six oth­ers for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice stem­ming from charges of an al­leged taser at­tack. Five months ago, a po­lice of­fi­cer was charged with the mur­der of a 38-year-old fa­ther of five in Pleas­antville. The vic­tim was shot twice in the head.Is mis­con­duct with­in the ranks on the rise? If so, what does this mean for the over­all im­age of the TTPS whose Cana­di­an-born Com­mis­sion­er has placed heavy em­pha­sis on trans­for­ma­tion of the en­ti­ty?

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, of the Fac­ul­ty of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, said the TTPS was un­der heavy pres­sure to im­prove its pub­lic im­age."The Po­lice Ser­vice is un­der pres­sure and the Gov­ern­ment wants to en­sure it im­proves the im­age but at the same time the pub­lic too."I think we are reach­ing a point where the pub­lic is just fed up be­cause the pub­lic doesn't have many good things to say about the Po­lice Ser­vice," Seep­er­sad said.How­ev­er, he added, that did not mean that all po­lice of­fi­cers were cor­rupt.

"I don't think all mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice do bad things all the time. I think there are one or two in­ci­dents that grab the pub­lic's at­ten­tion and in­flu­ence the per­cep­tion of the pub­lic in very pow­er­ful ways," Seep­er­sad said.He said re­search had in­di­cat­ed that as far back as ten years ago, com­plaints were be­ing made against po­lice of­fi­cers by mem­bers of the pub­lic. Such mat­ters were of­ten sen­si­tive and re­quired time to be prop­er­ly probed, he added.He said: "These in­ves­ti­ga­tions would take on a process very much like what hap­pens in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which is slow.

"But at the same time I think we need to recog­nise that we need to give these types of things pri­or­i­ty be­cause po­lice could go and do all kinds of things and if these things are al­lowed to be swept un­der the car­pet, or if it takes so long that it just dis­ap­pears over time, mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice would recog­nise this is some­thing they could do and get away with." Ac­cord­ing to Seep­er­sad, part of the prob­lem was the fail­ure by pre­vi­ous po­lice com­mis­sion­ers to im­ple­ment sys­tems to en­sure cor­rupt el­e­ments with­in the ser­vice were quick­ly iden­ti­fied and on­ly qual­i­ty can­di­dates were se­lect­ed for re­cruit­ment.

"We are on­ly now start­ing to recog­nise there are many types of tech­nol­o­gy and all sorts of meth­ods of eval­u­a­tion to en­sure peo­ple brought in­to the ser­vice will not be like­ly to com­mit il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties," he point­ed out.He said an­oth­er rea­son may have sim­ply been lack of knowl­edge by pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­ers about tech­nol­o­gy and up-to-date eval­u­a­tion process­es.He added: "When you com­pare the present to the past you have a sit­u­a­tion where the pub­lic's per­cep­tion and the whole po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, the way that it is or­gan­ised, is one that bends to what the pub­lic wants."In a sense it forces the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, the Po­lice Ser­vice, to ap­pear tough on crime even if it some­times means that they do il­le­gal things."

Tremen­dous need for change in dis­ci­pli­nary process-PSC

In­ci­dents of cor­rup­tion and wrong­do­ing in the TTPS, when placed un­der the mi­cro­scope of watch­dog bod­ies like the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), have brought the ef­fec­tive­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy of the dis­ci­pli­nary process of the Po­lice Ser­vice in­to ques­tion, said PSC mem­ber Mar­tin George.He said up­on ex­am­in­ing judg­ments from ap­peal mat­ters, the PSC has made "very point­ed and di­rect com­ments.""The ap­peals tri­bunal has asked the at­tor­ney for the Com­mis­sion­er to re­port back to the Com­mis­sion cer­tain ob­ser­va­tions that we have made be­cause we are not sat­is­fied with many as­pects of the way dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dure takes place with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice," George said.

He added that there was a tremen­dous need for re­vamp­ing and im­prov­ing the dis­ci­pli­nary process. That, he said, must cov­er the way ev­i­dence was gath­ered and pre­sent­ed."The en­tire process, in terms of its struc­ture from start to fin­ish, needs to be looked at with a view to mak­ing it a faster more holis­tic and more ob­jec­tive process where­by par­ties can feel that jus­tice is served," he as­sert­ed.In its quest to make of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing the ex­ec­u­tive of the TTPS, more ac­count­able for their ac­tions, George said the PSC had al­so set guide­lines deal­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly with dis­ci­pline.

550 com­plaints and­count­ing-PCA

An­oth­er watch­dog en­ti­ty, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), has em­barked on an ex­am­i­na­tion of cas­es dat­ing as far back as three years ago to de­ter­mine the sta­tus of probes in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.The or­gan­i­sa­tion's di­rec­tor, for­mer High Court judge Gillian Lucky, said one of the "great­est" con­tribut­ing fac­tors to cor­rup­tion in the TTPS was the "dis­con­nec­tion" among sev­er­al key stake­hold­ers.She said: "It is a break­down, a dis­con­nect, with re­spect to in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions that are meant to play a role in mon­i­tor­ing and ac­tu­al­ly fo­cus­ing on po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the ser­vice and al­so out­side the Po­lice Ser­vice which would be in­ter­nal bod­ies and ex­ter­nal bod­ies."The PCA is look­ing at this dis­con­nect to plug the holes," Lucky said.

The PCS would al­so be track­ing mat­ters in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers and the State had to pay large sums of mon­ey be­cause those of­fi­cers were in breach of the law.She added: "We want to com­pile a list of names of those of­fi­cers to de­ter­mine where they are and to de­ter­mine by way of cross ref­er­ence whether any ac­tion should be tak­en against those of­fi­cers."There's a big prob­lem in T&T where it is very dif­fi­cult for us to en­force laws be­cause peo­ple be­lieve they can get away with breach­ing the law and even if they do get away they be­lieve there is no sanc­tion or de­ci­sion that will stick."

How can cor­rup­tion be pre­vent­ed in the Po­lice Ser­vice?

Lucky rec­om­mend­ed high­er and more rig­or­ous stan­dards in re­cruit­ment and train­ing of of­fi­cers to in­still the prin­ci­ples of in­tegri­ty, ethics, pride and hon­esty from the in­cep­tion of their ca­reer in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.A code of ethics, she added, fash­ioned with in­put from the of­fi­cers, stake­hold­ers and the com­mu­ni­ty which could al­so as­sist in cre­at­ing a sys­tem of ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with de­fined pa­ra­me­ters with­in which all of­fi­cers should op­er­ate.

Dis­turb­ing in­ci­dents-Ewats­ki

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in charge of An­ti-Crime Op­er­a­tions Jack Ewats­ki de­scribed the lat­est in­ci­dents in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers as "dis­turb­ing." He said it was a "very sad day" for the TTPS.How­ev­er, the se­nior cop em­pha­sised that such in­ci­dents were part of the "re­al­i­ty" of all po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tions."This is re­al­i­ty. These things do oc­cur and it is im­per­a­tive that the lead­er­ship of these or­gan­i­sa­tions pro­vide the prop­er en­vi­ron­ment to en­sure the pub­lic con­fi­dence does not get erod­ed when we have to deal with al­le­ga­tion of se­ri­ous po­lice mis­con­duct," Ewats­ki said.He said such in­ci­dents do not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­flect an in­crease in rogue el­e­ments with­in the TTPS but rather a con­sci­en­tious ef­fort on the part of ded­i­cat­ed of­fi­cers to weed out their cor­rupt col­leagues.

Ques­tioned about the per­cep­tion that probes in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers were of­ten lengthy, Ewats­ki con­ced­ed such in­ves­ti­ga­tions were "very long, com­pli­cat­ed and com­plex" to meet the scruti­ny of the courts.De­spite crit­i­cism that the process of se­lect­ing po­lice re­cruits was poor, Ewats­ki dis­agreed. He in­sist­ed that the ex­ist­ing pro­ce­dure is "very good."He added: "I do be­lieve we do have a very good process in place and I will con­tin­ue to say that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers, the serv­ing mem­bers and peo­ple who have re­cent­ly come in­to the Po­lice Ser­vice, are good, hard-work­ing, hon­est peo­ple with the right char­ac­ter to do the job.

"But with any po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tion you are go­ing to find peo­ple who step out­side the bound­aries of the law and we have to en­sure we are tak­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to en­sure those peo­ple are not al­lowed to have the au­thor­i­ty of a po­lice of­fi­cer, or the priv­i­lege of be­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer."