Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

With the ex­pe­ri­ences of the past ex­ec­u­tive of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and the vi­sion of the new­ly in­stalled one, there is now an op­por­tu­ni­ty to heal the wounds of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

For­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), Prof Emer­i­tus Ramesh De­osaran said over the years, the or­gan­i­sa­tion and struc­ture of the Po­lice Ser­vice have been harmed in sev­er­al ways even though vast sums of mon­ey have been spent.

He said, "Hope­ful­ly, with the ex­pe­ri­ences of your pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive and the en­thu­si­asm and vi­sion of your new ex­ec­u­tive, there is now the op­por­tu­ni­ty to heal the wounds, to press your case for­ward while gain­ing the re­spect of both the Gov­ern­ment and the pop­u­la­tion you serve."

De­osaran said while wounds ex­ist­ed, chal­lenges of law­less­ness and crime of all kinds from top to bot­tom in the so­ci­ety have in­creased. He cit­ed the ex­pand­ing na­ture and amount of il­le­gal drugs, hu­man traf­fick­ing, ter­ror­ism, bor­der in­se­cu­ri­ty and state cor­rup­tion which bring added pres­sures on the TTPS, while an anx­ious pop­u­la­tion com­plained.

De­osaran was the fea­ture speak­er at yes­ter­day's in­stal­la­tion of the new ex­ec­u­tive of the as­so­ci­a­tion head­ed by In­sp Michael Seales.

The event was held at the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre and was at­tend­ed by Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and for­mer ACP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith.

De­osaran's speech, ti­tled A Wound­ed Po­lice Ser­vice, fo­cused on six mat­ters about the struc­ture and op­er­a­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice which he said mer­it deep con­cern by the Po­lice Ser­vice, Gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic.

Mean­while, De­osaran said tin­ker­ing with the TTPS must stop. He said the in­ser­tion of a Po­lice Man­age­ment Board could se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mine and con­fuse the ex­ist­ing pow­ers of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

He ex­plained that the Con­sti­tu­tion now gives the Com­mis­sion­er "com­plete pow­er to man­age the Ser­vice–ap­point, pro­mote, trans­fer and dis­ci­pline of­fi­cers, ex­cept the deputy CoP (Sec­tion 123A)."

He said, "He is al­ready man­ag­er. The Gov­ern­ment al­so has to state clear­ly how its Po­lice In­spec­torate will af­fect the func­tion of the PSC at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­els."

He said po­lice gov­er­nance sat on two com­pet­ing prin­ci­ples. One was that in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, there was a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of hav­ing civil­ian con­trol over the po­lice.

"A de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, freely and fair­ly elect­ed, must feel se­cure that the po­lice will not take any sub­ver­sive ac­tion to jeop­ar­dise its pop­u­lar man­date."

The sec­ond, he said, was that the po­lice, un­der its Com­mis­sion­er, must be and feel po­lit­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent enough to ex­er­cise their in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers with­out fear or favour, treat­ing every­one equal­ly in the eyes of the law.

There­fore, he said, the ques­tion to be asked was, "To what ex­tent does po­lit­i­cal con­trol over the ap­point­ment of a com­mis­sion­er af­fect his abil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate se­ri­ous crimes al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by se­nior gov­ern­ment politi­cians or even the prime min­is­ter him­self or her­self?"