DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean Fed­er­a­tion of Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tions (CF­P­WA) has once again called for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pol­i­cy for po­lice ser­vices across the re­gion.

This was one of the ma­jor points at the CF­P­WA’s 10th in­ter­ces­sion­al meet­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James yes­ter­day.

CF­P­WA pres­i­dent and Sgt of the Roy­al Vir­gin Is­lands Po­lice Force, Sean Mc­Call, re­it­er­at­ed pre­vi­ous calls, as he said po­lice of­fi­cers re­quire pro­tec­tion from sex­u­al ha­rass­ment by their peers.

“Very few forces in the re­gion have a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pol­i­cy. We want to see that ad­dressed be­cause it’s very im­por­tant that of­fi­cers go to work in an en­vi­ron­ment that they feel safe and com­fort­able to per­form,” he said.

Back in Ju­ly, Mc­Call stat­ed that on­ly po­lice forces/ser­vices in the Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, Cay­man Is­lands, Ja­maica and the Turks and Caicos have sex­u­al ha­rass­ment poli­cies. At the time, he was com­ment­ing on al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment by a se­nior mem­ber of the Roy­al St Lu­cia Po­lice Force, in which he con­demned the lack of ac­tion against the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Sgt Mc­Call told Guardian Me­dia the CF­P­WA wants to em­u­late the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) cur­rent arrange­ment where of­fi­cers are com­pen­sat­ed for over­time.

“While I’m hap­py that in Trinidad the po­lice of­fi­cers are com­pen­sat­ed for the hours they work, it’s not the same in all ju­ris­dic­tions of the Caribbean. So, we’re lob­by­ing and we’ll be work­ing hard with our com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice and gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties to en­sure that we see a 40-hour work week for our of­fi­cers around the re­gion,” he said.

T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, was not present at the meet­ing. How­ev­er, he lat­er not­ed that the CF­P­WA’s sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Nathalie John and Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Tri­cia Du­rant-Charles rep­re­sent­ed his as­so­ci­a­tion.

While he wel­comed Mc­Call’s call for a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pol­i­cy across all po­lice ser­vices or forces in the Caribbean, he de­nied this was a preva­lent is­sue in the TTPS. He said of­fi­cers have em­barked on high­er ed­u­ca­tion, which has sen­si­tised them and ul­ti­mate­ly pre­vent­ed this is­sue. Nonethe­less, he said there are mech­a­nisms in place that can and will be ac­ti­vat­ed should any form of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment be re­port­ed.

“As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we sel­dom have to treat with is­sues of that na­ture but we have our gen­der-based unit and they will be the first port of call to treat with any is­sues of that na­ture if it bor­ders on any form of crim­i­nal con­duct or crim­i­nal mis­con­duct by the of­fi­cers,” Dick­son said.

“We al­so have our own so­cial work de­part­ment which we will al­so use as in­ter­me­di­a­cy to en­gage in mat­ters of that na­ture and we al­so have our Vic­tim Sup­port Unit should any of­fi­cer be a vic­tim of such acts of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment where they could get coun­selling to be able to bring them back to a lev­el of nor­mal­cy.”

He said com­ing out of the con­fer­ence, the TTPSS­WA is work­ing on digi­tis­ing its plat­form and po­ten­tial­ly host­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions on­line.