An­na-Lisa Paul

In an ef­fort to boost the morale of po­lice of­fi­cers and en­sure their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the job, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has re­vealed a new part­ner­ship with the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion geared to­wards in­creased wages and im­proved con­di­tions for all po­lice. Williams made the rev­e­la­tion on Wednes­day when he spoke to re­porters at the week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. Say­ing he had met with the as­so­ci­a­tion's ex­ec­u­tive on Mon­day to dis­cuss a num­ber of is­sues, in­clud­ing strate­gies to re­duce crime, Williams said: "The as­so­ci­a­tion gave us the un­der­tak­ing of their full sup­port to­wards this goal, but to al­so en­sure that of­fi­cers com­mit to ad­di­tion­al work hours over the next four months as we seek to take to­tal con­trol of the crime sit­u­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the area of vi­o­lent crime." In ex­change, Williams said the Po­lice Ser­vice ad­min­is­tra­tion had giv­en the un­der­tak­ing to re­view the pro­mo­tion sys­tem. He said a six-mem­ber com­mit­tee head­ed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Si­mon Alex­is and which com­prised three mem­bers from the as­so­ci­a­tion and three from the Po­lice Ser­vice was re­view­ing the sys­tem and was ex­pect­ed to sub­mit rec­om­men­da­tions on how it could be im­proved by the end of this month.

Pub­licly voic­ing his sup­port for the as­so­ci­a­tion, Williams said: "While we are mak­ing a spe­cial de­mand of the of­fi­cers to per­form, there is a need for their salaries and al­lowances and oth­er terms and con­di­tions to be re­vis­it­ed. If some re­vis­it­ing is done, we can find a work­able res­o­lu­tion around the out­stand­ing is­sue of pay for po­lice of­fi­cers." Williams said it was nec­es­sary to look at both sides, as the ad­min­is­tra­tion was ask­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to stop do­ing ex­tra du­ties. "In press­ing of­fi­cers to de­sist from the ex­tra du­ty they are per­form­ing which may or may not im­pact their gen­er­al du­ties, if we are ask­ing them to de­sist from work­ing ex­tra du­ty, we need to en­sure they have a rea­son­able re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age. Right now, the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age is poor and some­thing must be done in re­la­tion to that," Williams said. He said it was im­por­tant to have the as­so­ci­a­tion's co-op­er­a­tion as its mem­bers made up an ex­treme­ly large per­cent­age of the Po­lice Ser­vice. On the is­sue of how he planned to re­duce crime, Williams said a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach was nec­es­sary and should in­clude the Com­mu­ni­ty Ini­tia­tive to Re­duce Vi­o­lence (CIRV).