Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

As the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice cel­e­brates 69 years of women in the ser­vice, Rev Er­ic Thomp­son wants Venezue­lan women added to the re­source pool to help law en­force­ment in­fil­trate the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion.

Speak­ing at the St Thomas An­gli­can Church, Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, dur­ing an in­ter­faith ser­vice for women in the TTPS, Thomp­son said in keep­ing with the theme Strik­ing a Bal­ance, re­cruit­ing mi­grant women in­to TTPS was one way to do it.

“Strik­ing a bal­ance may mean the re­cruit­ment from Venezuela in­to the po­lice ser­vice. Be­fore we know it, we will have a mi­grant pop­u­la­tion from Venezuela that will be hard to in­fil­trate,” Thomp­son said.

He added: “Maybe it is time to re­view our laws, to re­view the Po­lice Ser­vice Act to in­clude in our re­cruit­ing strate­gies, women of Span­ish speak­ing to bridge the cul­tur­al gap and to give you a fight­ing chance in this dark world that will be­come dark­er in the years to come.”

He said the TTPS should re­cruit and re­tain mem­bers from di­verse back­grounds to bet­ter un­der­stand and serve the pop­u­la­tion’s needs, es­pe­cial­ly since the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing.

Thomp­son said the coun­try has been for­tu­nate to have a po­lice ser­vice of good qual­i­ty, which is able to meet the needs of the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said with crime lev­els in­creas­ing it has been chal­leng­ing, as the po­lice do not have the man­date or man­pow­er to po­lice every­one on a one-to-one ba­sis.

“Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the po­lice is blamed for every­thing that goes wrong in so­ci­ety and you have gra­cious­ly kept your si­lence, be­cause you are a dis­ci­plined group led by a God­ly com­mis­sion­er.”

He said the glass ceil­ing of the po­lice ser­vice has been shat­tered with a new era emerg­ing. With that, he re­mind­ed those gath­ered of the theme, which he said meant find­ing a bal­ance be­tween two or more con­flict­ing things and urged them to put God at the cen­tre of it all.

He re­ferred to the book of Ec­cle­si­astes, par­tic­u­lar­ly chap­ter eight ver­sus one through eight that speaks of hav­ing time and sea­sons for things. He said polic­ing must be viewed from both the pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al per­spec­tives to main­tain a bal­ance.

Dur­ing her speech, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher told the of­fi­cers that they have her sup­port in find­ing a healthy work/life bal­ance.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher said bal­anc­ing as­pects of one’s life will not be easy, but it is es­sen­tial. She said it re­quires ded­i­ca­tion, strate­gic think­ing, and, most im­por­tant­ly, sup­port from the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“As Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I want to as­sure the women that you have the sup­port of your or­gan­i­sa­tion, the sup­port of the ex­ec­u­tive, to be what they want to be and ex­cel in any en­deav­our in the po­lice ser­vice.”

She said at times of fa­tigue the of­fi­cers should per­se­vere, as the prac­tice of bal­ance is what al­lows po­lice as in­di­vid­u­als and the po­lice ser­vice to grow, thrive and ex­cel. Like with mu­sic, she said, if a wrong note is struck in bal­anc­ing work and oth­er as­pects of one’s life, the goal is not to stop play­ing but to press on and strive to press on every day.

“As a fe­male com­mis­sion­er, I am a fruit of the trail­blaz­ers. The coura­geous women who came be­fore me. Women who shat­tered glass ceil­ings, who fought for equal­i­ty and who proved dai­ly, that over and over, that com­pe­tence and lead­er­ship knows no gen­der.”

She said the women not on­ly up­held the stan­dards of the ser­vice but ad­vanced them, adding that they ex­em­pli­fied a healthy bal­ance.