Derek Achong

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says lo­cals are best suit­ed to hold the post of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. He made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his min­istry's Tem­ple Court, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice, which fol­lowed a meet­ing with a group of re­ligous lead­ers.

"In my opin­ion there are peo­ple here that are quite com­pe­tent to hold the post of com­mis­sion­er. One of the mis­takes we have made, if you ask me, is that we have been fooled in­to be­liev­ing that the com­pe­ten­cy to hold that of­fice is out­side this coun­try and this is not so," he said.

Warn­er was re­spond­ing to a state­ment on the is­sue by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams who, while speak­ing on Tues­day at the his first po­lice press brief­ing af­ter as­sum­ing the post, was quot­ed as say­ing: "I would an­swer straight­for­ward... I think, yes, it is best left to lo­cals like my­self." Williams has been ap­point­ed to the post for six months af­ter for­mer com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and his deputy Jack Ewats­ki, who are both Cana­di­ans, re­signed on Ju­ly 26 af­ter two years of their three-year con­tract.

Williams, speak­ing along­side Warn­er yes­ter­day, said the Po­lice Ser­vice would be im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al new an­ti-crime mea­sure dur­ing his tenure. He added: "What is crit­i­cal to­day is for us to ex­plore ways and means of im­prov­ing how we can ef­fec­tive­ly man­age crime in T&T. "There will be nu­mer­ous ini­tia­tives to be im­ple­ment­ed over time. Some will be suc­cess­ful and oth­ers will not."

When asked about his stance on po­lice shoot­ings and bru­tal­i­ty, Williams said he would not pro­mote "ag­gres­sive polic­ing," but not­ed there were some sit­u­a­tions which might re­quire his of­fi­cers to use their guns. He added: "Every in­ci­dent is sub­ject to re­view and there is a Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) and an in­quest court. "It's a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion. It is not fun and games. Every day po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing con­front­ed by crim­i­nals. They are putting their lives on the line."

In­ter-Re­ligous Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj, who was at yes­ter­day's meet­ing, told re­porters his or­gan­i­sa­tion planned to in­crease its part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment to deal with crime. Ma­haraj said at the meet­ing his group sug­gest­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice should de­vel­op more com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives.

He said such ini­tia­tives and pro­grammes would build trust and con­fi­dence in the ser­vice which would be vi­tal when at­tempt­ing to re­duce vi­o­lent crime. Ma­haraj al­so said bet­ter par­ent­ing was need­ed to pre­vent crimes which were main­ly com­mit­ted by youths.