DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Dwayne Gibbs says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley should be cau­tious about a “vet­ted unit” in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as it could lead to cor­rup­tion.

In an email ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, the for­mer top cop said while spe­cial­ist units are nec­es­sary to tack­le high-lev­el crime, mon­ey should not be an in­cen­tive. In­stead, he said of­fi­cers should be se­lect­ed based on their in­tegri­ty, oth­er­wise it could lead to ex­act­ly what Dr Row­ley is hop­ing to erad­i­cate.

On Ju­ly 15, Row­ley, on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form in San Fer­nan­do said, “One of the prob­lems that we have is that there are too many crim­i­nals in the po­lice ser­vice.”

He said the re­gion had sought help from the US and one of the rec­om­men­da­tions from the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI) was to cre­ate a bet­ter-paid, spe­cialised ‘vet­ted’ unit in the TTPS.

“One of the re­quire­ments of that agree­ment is that we in the po­lice ser­vice, in or­der to in­ter­act with their ser­vice and pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the op­er­a­tions, that we need to have vet­ted units, where we can re­ly on the in­tegri­ty of the of­fi­cers who will be giv­en cer­tain cor­ri­dors of ac­tiv­i­ty and cer­tain cor­ri­dors of in­for­ma­tion,” he said at post-Cab­i­net last week.

Gibbs, who served this coun­try from Ju­ly 2010 to Sep­tem­ber 2012, over­saw the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTPS Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) in the first year of his tenure. The PSB was set up to deal with in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers about their ser­vice, con­duct, or crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

“They need to have an ex­em­plary polic­ing back­ground. In oth­er words, they are trust­ed in do­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions im­par­tial­ly and thor­ough­ly. They are not mo­ti­vat­ed by ex­tra pay, which in it­self, can lead to cor­rup­tion,” he said in ref­er­ence to PSB of­fi­cers.

Gibbs ac­knowl­edged that the PSB was just one unit that deals with com­plaints against po­lice of­fi­cers. He went on to state that the unit should be re­vamped and strength­ened if bad seeds have start­ed to spoil the bunch.

“If there is proven cor­rup­tion in the PSB it­self, vet­ting and chang­ing the unit would be ap­pro­pri­ate but not if it is po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed for rea­sons that are not al­tru­is­tic,” he said.

More than that, Gibbs agreed that of­fi­cers should be vet­ted to work with the FBI, but he re­it­er­at­ed that mon­ey should not be dan­gled to at­tract in­ter­est­ed of­fi­cers.

“To have a trust­ed unit to work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the US crime units to deal with or­gan­ised crime in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing/smug­gling, il­le­gal weapons, hu­man traf­fick­ing, etc, would be a good thing. I agree the of­fi­cers need to be se­lect­ed on their mer­it and not for mon­e­tary rea­sons,” he said.

The for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er did not com­ment on the over­all crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T as he is out of his home coun­try, Cana­da, and not in a po­si­tion to do so.

For­mer PSB head: Fi­nan­cial in­cen­tive not the way

A for­mer head of the PSB, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said Dr Row­ley’s pro­posed vet­ted units are not a “quick fix” to is­sues of cor­rup­tion with­in the TTPS. The re­tired se­nior of­fi­cer not­ed that some­thing must be done to clean up the ser­vice in­clud­ing bet­ter vet­ting from the lev­el of the train­ing acad­e­my.

How­ev­er, he agreed with Gibbs that a fi­nan­cial in­cen­tive is not the way for­ward as “in­tegri­ty does not have a price”.

He rec­om­mend­ed the strength­en­ing of units with the in­tro­duc­tion of new equip­ment and man­pow­er to com­bat crime. He al­so cau­tioned against pro­mot­ing or ac­cept­ing in­di­vid­u­als sim­ply be­cause they are in­ter­est­ed in the job as these men and women can be­come un­scrupu­lous.

The ex-law en­force­ment head al­so not­ed that spe­cial­ist of­fi­cers who have amassed great suc­cess ought to be scru­ti­nised as they can some­times be­come a law to them­selves.

Speak­ing can­did­ly, the for­mer po­lice­man cast as­per­sions on some of the in­di­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly run­ning elite units or di­vi­sions who were re­gard­ed as per­sons of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter dur­ing his time at the helm of the PSB.

He al­leged that the unit re­ceived in­tel­li­gence about in­di­vid­u­als who were ju­niors at the time, but said in­ves­ti­ga­tors strug­gled to get state­ments and ev­i­dence from their col­leagues. Now, they over­see cer­tain de­part­ments or ar­eas in the TTPS which he said is con­cern­ing.

Still, he as­sured that cor­rupt el­e­ments with­in the TTPS are a small num­ber com­pared to the hon­est, hard-work­ing ma­jor­i­ty.

The for­mer of­fi­cer al­so called for salaries to be in­creased in the TTPS, as of­fi­cers are liv­ing on 2013 pay cheques.

One of the first cas­es the PSB in­ves­ti­gat­ed is now in the High Court 12 years lat­er. The PSB’s ini­tial head, re­tired DCP Ray­mond Craig, laid mur­der charges against six po­lice of­fi­cers ac­cused of killing friends Al­lana Dun­can, Abi­gail John­son, and Keron Fer­nan­do Ec­cles on Ju­ly 22, 2011, at Rochard Dou­glas Road, Bar­rack­pore. The of­fi­cers were said to be in pur­suit of Shum­ba James, who him­self has been charged with at­tempt­ed mur­der and is out on bail.