Joshua Sur­tees

In the midst of an­oth­er week­end of killings which took the 2014 mur­der count to 207 in 173 days with on­ly 26 of those mur­ders 'solved', Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith an­nounced that a "com­plete au­dit" of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is to be un­der­tak­en by two US law en­force­ment agen­cies to put the po­lice force un­der greater scruti­ny.

Grif­fith al­so re­vealed to the T&T Guardian that he is trav­el­ling to Lon­don for meet­ings with an agency rec­om­mend­ed by the UK Gov­ern­ment about im­prov­ing the 13 per cent mur­der de­tec­tion rate.Thir­ty cit­i­zens have been killed by po­lice this year, in­flam­ing ten­sions in high-crime ar­eas and rais­ing ques­tions about polic­ing meth­ods.

In a press re­lease sent out on Sat­ur­day evening, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ac­knowl­edged there were "short­com­ings" in the po­lice force and said the coun­try is now ex­posed to "vary­ing threats, some of which may not have even ex­ist­ed decades ago."The re­lease con­clud­ed that "the present es­tab­lish­ment of the TTPS does not cater for these new threats."

Grif­fith in­di­cat­ed he will aim to use the au­dit to guide his de­ci­sions on re­struc­tur­ing the po­lice ser­vice, re­dis­trib­ut­ing po­lice of­fi­cers and po­ten­tial­ly cre­at­ing new se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies in the ar­eas of "in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, covert op­er­a­tions, crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a spe­cial vic­tims unit, child pro­tec­tion task force, (and) an emer­gency sec­tions unit."He al­so said polic­ing would be­come more proac­tive rather than re­ac­tive.

Grif­fith has been in New York for the past fort­night dis­cussing the de­tails of the au­dit with two agen­cies, Har­nett As­so­ciates and Giu­liani So­lu­tion Point Glob­al Ser­vices (GSPGS.) Har­nett As­so­ciates, is run by New York Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er William Brat­ton's right hand man, Patrick Har­nett and will be re­spon­si­ble for a com­pre­hen­sive op­er­a­tional re­view of the TTPS.

GSPGS is the se­cu­ri­ty firm of for­mer New York May­or, Rudolph Giu­liani who has met with Grif­fith to dis­cuss the com­put­er­i­sa­tion of crime sta­tis­tics, a fin­ger­print data­base, cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing and an­ti-cor­rup­tion ini­tia­tives.Con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Grif­fith was asked whether a 13 per cent mur­der de­tec­tion rate im­plies a lack of skills and train­ing in the TTPS.

He replied, "Not nec­es­sar­i­ly," then added, "I am trav­el­ling to Lon­don to meet with a high­ly qual­i­fied agency to deal with this, as rec­om­mend­ed by the UK Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er the ul­ti­mate mech­a­nism to in­crease de­tec­tion rate in homi­cides is hu­man in­tel­li­gence.

It is dif­fi­cult to de­tect a mur­der if there are no wit­ness­es... Hence the dri­ve I am push­ing with get­ting the pub­lic to have a sys­tem to re­lay in­for­ma­tion to the law en­force­ment agen­cies via VIPO (Vir­tu­al Po­lice Of­fi­cer) and al­so us­ing sys­tems to win back the trust be­tween cit­i­zens and po­lice which al­so in­cludes weed­ing out the rogue el­e­ments in the ser­vice."

VIPO was an­nounced in De­cem­ber last year as a se­cure elec­tron­ic way for cit­i­zens to pass in­for­ma­tion anony­mous­ly to the po­lice to as­sist their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.Asked whether T&T has enough spe­cial­ist homi­cide de­tec­tives, Grif­fith said that the au­dit will pro­vide the an­swer to that. Asked whether the au­dit would lead to fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment agen­cies in terms of polic­ing on the ground in Trinidad, he said "Yes, I be­lieve so."

Who will be car­ryin­gout the po­lice au­dit?

'Bill' Brat­ton, the re­cent­ly reap­point­ed New York Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, vis­it­ed Trinidad in No­vem­ber 2013 to speak at a con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by Grif­fith.An ad­vo­cate of 'ze­ro tol­er­ance' polic­ing and eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse po­lice forces, Brat­ton has had his poli­cies praised and crit­i­cised in his roles as po­lice chief in New York, Los An­ge­les and Boston.He was New York po­lice chief be­tween 1994 and 1996 where he helped to re­duce the crime rate be­fore be­ing oust­ed by May­or Giu­liani.

In Ju­ly 2011, British Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron, ap­proached Brat­ton about be­com­ing Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in Lon­don, just weeks be­fore ri­ot­ing swept the coun­try for five days fol­low­ing the killing of an un­armed sus­pect­ed drug deal­er by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Brat­ton's ad­vo­ca­cy of the 'bro­ken win­dow' method of polic­ing, in which pet­ty crimes are clamped down on in or­der to pre­vent them es­ca­lat­ing in­to se­ri­ous crimes, may re­ceive pub­lic sup­port in T&T. But res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties like Laven­tille, Mor­vant and Beetham where ten­sions be­tween res­i­dents and the po­lice are al­ready high, might raise eye­brows at any sug­ges­tion of fur­ther clam­p­downs.

In 2006, Har­nett As­so­ciates con­duct­ed a re­view of the Oak­land Po­lice De­part­ment in Cal­i­for­nia, an area with a his­to­ry of com­mu­ni­ty-po­lice ten­sion. It rec­om­mend­ed a change in pol­i­cy away from a "shift-dri­ven ap­proach" to "in­for­ma­tion-led and com­mu­ni­ty-led" polic­ing–the im­pli­ca­tion be­ing that po­lice should be seen as part of a com­mu­ni­ty rather than sim­ply turn­ing up to do a job.

In 2013 the Brat­ton Group was hired to re­view Oak­land Po­lice De­part­ment again af­ter the FBI re­port­ed that Oak­land's rob­bery rate was the worst in the coun­try with 12 rob­beries a day. Oak­land's po­lice chief re­signed in the wake of the re­port.On his vis­it last year, Brat­ton vis­it­ed 'at-risk' ar­eas in Laven­tille, in­clud­ing Bev­er­ley Hills, with Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, ac­com­pa­nied by Har­nett.

In a press con­fer­ence dur­ing that vis­it, Brat­ton said that his Comp­Stat mod­el–a crime-map­ping tool de­vel­oped in the ear­ly 1990s to fa­cil­i­tate tar­get­ted po­lice re­sponse in ar­eas where crime is oc­cur­ring–can be mod­i­fied to work in any coun­try. He al­so sug­gest­ed T&T's crime prob­lems are not rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent to any oth­er coun­try with high crime lev­els, in­clud­ing the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion with­in the po­lice force.