Kali­fa Clyne

Al­most a year af­ter some po­lice of­fi­cers took the Po­lice Ser­vice Pro­mo­tions Ad­vi­so­ry Board to court over the fail­ure to pro­mote of­fi­cers, 27 sergeants were pro­mot­ed to the rank of in­spec­tor yes­ter­day.The pro­mo­tions, which took place at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain, brought smiles of hap­pi­ness to the faces of some of­fi­cers, who said they had worked hard and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the pro­mo­tions com­ing be­fore Christ­mas.

Oth­er of­fi­cers, who won the right to be pro­mot­ed af­ter act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams tried to change the re­quire­ments for pro­mo­tion, would have to wait to be pro­mot­ed, as there are not enough va­can­cies in the ser­vice.Williams said yes­ter­day that as per the court de­ci­sion, the po­lice ser­vice had com­plet­ed a re­vised mer­it list which gave full marks to all sergeants for the ex­am­i­na­tion com­po­nent of the pro­mo­tion as­sess­ment.

Williams said the Po­lice Ser­vice would put sys­tems in place in 2014 to make sure it had a prop­er­ly-de­signed as­sess­ment in place to pro­mote sergeants to in­spec­tors.Since 2007, when new reg­u­la­tions came in­to ef­fect, it was agreed by the ser­vice that all sergeants would get the 35 marks for the ex­am­i­na­tion com­po­nent of the as­sess­ment for pro­mo­tion to in­spec­tor.Last year, Williams made a de­ci­sion to re­vert to a pre­vi­ous sys­tem in which en­try-lev­el Eng­lish was used for the ex­am­i­na­tion.

As a re­sult of this, of­fi­cers' place­ment in the or­der of mer­it list was skewed.Of­fi­cers went to court to chal­lenge this de­ci­sion and the court held that sergeants should be giv­en the full 35 marks.Williams said oth­er sergeants would be pro­mot­ed once po­si­tions be­came va­cant.Among those pro­mot­ed was the Po­lice Ser­vice pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Wayne Mys­tar.