Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

In the spir­it of to­mor­row's com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has said that there are "nu­mer­ous shack­les" placed on him as head of the Po­lice Ser­vice and there may be need for him to lib­er­ate him­self from some of them to al­low for the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.Speak­ing at an event held by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, ti­tled Repa­ra­tion–Right­ing His­tor­i­cal Wrongs, at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Williams said he was "tak­ing some lev­el of free­dom to be a bit con­tentious" while speak­ing on the themes of eman­ci­pa­tion and repa­ra­tion.

He said: "To be con­tentious, I would say eman­ci­pa­tion has meant for me that I must take all that was made avail­able to me and make max­i­mum use of it."The sky is the lim­it and if I con­tin­ue to box my­self with the per­cep­tion that what has gone in the past amongst to per­ma­nent shack­les for my growth and de­vel­op­ment, I will be do­ing my­self a ma­jor dis­ser­vice."He spoke about the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Act and the Po­lice Ser­vice Act of 2006 which he said were amend­ed "to pro­vide the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice with what is re­ferred to as com­plete pow­er to man­age the hu­man, fi­nan­cial and ma­te­r­i­al re­sources as­signed to the or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Williams said de­spite that amend­ment, there were still lim­i­ta­tions on the pow­er of the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, in­clud­ing re­stric­tions on his abil­i­ty to send of­fi­cers abroad for train­ing.

He added: "Then there are nu­mer­ous shack­les placed on the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice that he can­not even send an of­fi­cer who is iden­ti­fied by him and the or­gan­i­sa­tion for a train­ing pro­gramme any­where be­yond To­ba­go."Eman­ci­pa­tion sig­nals to me that I will have to take some lev­el of free­dom around that and change the course of di­rec­tion for the or­gan­i­sa­tion if the con­sti­tu­tion so pro­vides."Well eman­ci­pa­tion may mean that I may not sit at the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion for much longer by tak­ing strong po­si­tions like those."

He said eman­ci­pa­tion in the con­text of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice meant that every em­ploy­ee must iden­ti­fy all that he or she could do to en­sure that the or­gan­i­sa­tion de­liv­ered high-qual­i­ty polic­ing ser­vice to all cit­i­zens and that could on­ly be achieved if every em­ploy­ee recog­nised his or her val­ue with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.