Police Service lacks direction—Volney

The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service is a rudderless ship in dire need of transformation. This was description branded on the organisation yesterday by Justice Minister Herbert Volney regarding the performance of Police Commissioner Dwyane Gibbs and his three Deputy Police Commissioners, Stephen Williams, Mervyn Richardson and Jack Ewatski. And the Justice Minister, in an interview, also called for the dismantling of the executive administrative body of the Police Service, saying that the time was overdue to make the divisional heads more accountable. Gibbs has been at the centre of much criticism after spending $902,772 to lease a light aircraft for a three-month pilot project and had failed to inform National Security Minister John Sandy.

Calling for a policy direction to be set which would pave the way forward, Volney said this had not been forthcoming by senior executive members of the service. “I have seen very little to change their systems and I think that the time has now come to break up the administration of the service into regions and hold the heads of each region personally responsible for the performance of their regions,” Volney said. He said unless there was a drastic change in the leadership, very little would be achieved in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of the Police Service. “The Police Service as configured lacks leadership, it lacks direction. And unless there is a paradigm shift in the leadership in the methods of administration which I have not seen in the last two years, the Police Service will continue to be a rudderless ship with no direction and will continue not to produce the kind of results that the population expects of it,” Volney charged.

He said because the Police Service was entitled to its own budget too much was left in the hands of administration. “Because the Police Service now has its own budget, too much has been left for the leadership in the administration of the Police Service within to decide,” Volney said. “There ought to be some ministerial oversight to set the policy guidelines of where the Police Service should be going and what is expected of them and for measures to introduced to upgrade the Standing Orders of the Police Service in order to make police officers from the rank of constable right up accountable for their actions so if they crossed the line they could be summarily dismissed.”

Questioned whether he believed that the contracts of Gibbs and Ewatski should be renewed after the three-year period, Volney called for an immediate review of the contracts and performance assessments. “I think that the contract of the commissioner and the deputy commissioner should be reviewed and an assessment should be made regarding their relevance to policing, what their plans are, how much time they have spent implementing their plans and what are the rest of their plans for their contracted period,” he said. Saying that both Gibbs and Ewatski had been given “quite a while to make a difference,” Volney said much more was needed to satisfy the general public. “While serious crimes are down and they have to be given some credit for it, the population wants more,” he added.

He, however, maintained that neither Gibbs, Ewatski, Richardson nor Williams could turn around the Police Service. “They cannot by themselves turn around the fortunes of the Police Service, much more is needed,” Volney said. He said there should be the reintroduction of bringing in officers at the level of assistant superintendent who would have university training.