The res­ig­na­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs is long over­due. This was the view of Sgt Anand Rame­sar, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion who added that Gibbs had failed to ef­fec­tive­ly take charge of the Po­lice Ser­vice and to deal with crime.

Rame­sar spoke af­ter yes­ter­day's launch of a Web site by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. The launch was held at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's. He al­so ques­tioned why the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive was not im­ple­ment­ed in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, an area where gun-re­lat­ed crimes, in­clud­ing homi­cides, were most preva­lent.

"If this ini­tia­tive is a suc­cess, why isn't it rolled out in the Port-of-Spain area, where the sta­tis­tics demon­strate that the oc­cur­rence of homi­cides in more preva­lent than any­where else? That re­mains an enig­ma for us," Rame­sar said. He said there was al­so con­fu­sion in the ser­vice as some of­fi­cers were made to work hard­er than oth­ers.

"There are a lot of things which are not be­ing ex­plained prop­er­ly to us...it leaves the mem­ber­ship in a lot of con­fu­sion," Rame­sar said. "There are mem­bers in the oth­er di­vi­sions who are be­ing worked ex­ces­sive­ly...They are ex­haust­ed." He al­so ques­tioned the move to re­in­sti­tute the joint army/po­lice pa­trols when the 21st-cen­tu­ry ini­tia­tive al­ready fo­cused on more pa­trols, al­so in crime-prone ar­eas.

"The joint army/po­lice pa­trol is com­ing on board with­out con­sul­ta­tion. We are not sure if that is the right di­rec­tion to go at this time," Rame­sar added. In April, the In­dus­tri­al Court threw out the Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion's ap­pli­ca­tion to stop the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing project.

The court's pres­i­dent, Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, re­ject­ed the doc­u­ments filed by Rame­sar, say­ing ap­pli­ca­tions re­lat­ing to po­lice labour can­not be brought against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, but in­stead must be brought to the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer (CPO).

She al­so sug­gest­ed the project may be il­le­gal be­cause the CPO was not in­volved in draft­ing its terms and con­di­tions. Asked about the sta­tus of talks with the CPO, Rame­sar said he had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with her twice and ex­pect­ed dis­cus­sions to be held with­in two weeks.

Of­fi­cer de­mor­alised

The ju­nior of­fi­cer who charged Tourism Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith for us­ing an­noy­ing lan­guage last month, which re­sult­ed in his trans­fer to an­oth­er sta­tion, has sought the ad­vice of the as­so­ci­a­tion. Rame­sar said he spoke to the of­fi­cer, who was "very de­mor­alised" af­ter he was boot­ed out from Port-of-Spain Traf­fic Branch.

The of­fi­cer took up du­ty at the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day. "From my un­der­stand­ing, he is an of­fi­cer whose per­for­mance ap­praisal in­di­cat­ed he is out­stand­ing, and it demon­strat­ed he was one who was very proac­tive as it re­lates to traf­fic reg­u­la­tions...now he's very de­spon­dent," Rame­sar said.

He said the mat­ter was ex­pect­ed to be re­viewed and was hop­ing the cor­rect de­ci­sion would be made. "I would ad­dress my mind to the is­sue of politi­cis­ing in the Po­lice Ser­vice, but I would ad­dress the is­sue of fair­ness and in the giv­en cir­cum­stances, the trans­fer was not jus­ti­fied."