De­spite be­ing act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er for mere days, Stephen Williams has al­ready been chal­lenged by the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion to fol­low in the foot­steps of out­go­ing com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to con­tin­ue to re­brand the Po­lice Ser­vice. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, al­so urged Williams to re­solve the is­sue of pro­mo­tion with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice giv­en the fact that 80 per cent of the of­fi­cers were act­ing. Rame­sar said Williams must "hit the ground run­ning" to boost morale with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. "Mr Williams must use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate he is el­i­gi­ble to be con­firmed as po­lice com­mis­sion­er and this would al­so serve as mo­ti­va­tion for him to per­form rather than be com­pla­cent. "He has not been giv­en a grace pe­ri­od," Rame­sar said.

He warned, how­ev­er, that Williams, like every oth­er po­lice com­mis­sion­er, would be un­der the scruti­ny of the as­so­ci­a­tion to en­sure the Po­lice Ser­vice is prop­er­ly run. Say­ing the pro­mo­tion process has stalled, Rame­sar said there were hun­dreds of of­fi­cers wait­ing to be pro­mot­ed from the rank of cor­po­ral to sergeants and from sergeants to in­spec­tors. "Pro­mo­tion is a big prob­lem with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, so much so it is paralysing the or­gan­i­sa­tion. We have of­fi­cers from all ranks wait­ing to be pro­mot­ed. We can­not have all these of­fi­cers in act­ing po­si­tions and noth­ing is be­ing done. Mr Williams must tack­le this prob­lem." Rame­sar said close­ly linked to speedy pro­mo­tion was morale and this is an­oth­er prob­lem that Williams must ad­dress. "What we have re­alised is morale af­fects per­for­mance. Po­lice of­fi­cers need to ral­ly to­geth­er to work hard­er. We want an ur­gent meet­ing with Mr Williams to dis­cuss these is­sues but at the same time we are pre­pared to stand by him and sup­port him."

If Williams fails to de­liv­er, Rame­sar said, the as­so­ci­a­tion would meet with him to point out his flaws and hope­ful­ly reach a unan­i­mous and am­i­ca­ble po­si­tion. Gibbs and Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki, whose res­ig­na­tions take ef­fect next Tues­day, were de­scribed by Rame­sar as ea­ger to use mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy in the Po­lice Ser­vice. "There was al­so an ap­petite to re­brand the Po­lice Ser­vice, which I hope will be fol­lowed by the act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er and not be cast out," Rame­sar said. Rame­sar al­so dis­pelled claims that "from day one" the as­so­ci­a­tion was on a mis­sion to get rid of Gibbs and Ewats­ki. "We nev­er dis­agreed with every­thing they did. We aligned our­selves with them from the very be­gin­ning...we sup­port­ed both Mr Gibbs and Mr Ewats­ki. "But we re­alised the needs of the mem­ber­ship and the pleas from the as­so­ci­a­tion went un­heed­ed." Rame­sar said the as­so­ci­a­tion had no in­ten­tion of call­ing for the to­tal re­moval of the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive. "We have nev­er called for the whole­sale aban­don­ment. We want the hours of work re­vised, so of­fi­cers could stop work­ing 70 hours a week and we want the po­lice sta­tions to re­main open." For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said he could not make any pro­nounce­ments on Williams' ca­pa­bil­i­ties as top cop since the du­ties of po­lice com­mis­sion­er were dif­fi­cult.