While the new Le­gal No­tice for se­lect­ing a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er has sim­pli­fied the process, there are some key el­e­ments still miss­ing.

This is the view of the for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran.

“The le­gal no­tice through Gov­ern­ment should have con­sid­ered more specifics in the cri­te­ria. The le­gal no­tice mere­ly states that the as­sess­ment should con­sid­er the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence of the can­di­date that has ob­vi­ous­ly left for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine the cri­te­ria. Now, on the last oc­ca­sion, the cri­te­ria were not clear and peo­ple kept fum­bling all over the place as to how was the act­ing or sub­stan­tive of­fi­cer se­lect­ed, what were the cri­te­ria,” Pro­fes­sor De­osaran said.

He stressed that pol­i­cy­mak­ers must learn from mis­takes in the past.

“I will sug­gest that you have man­age­r­i­al skills in the cri­te­ria. How you would mea­sure that; a per­son who is de­fi­cient in plan­ning op­er­a­tions and eval­u­at­ing the op­er­a­tions quick­ly and prop­er­ly. You want a com­mis­sion­er who could form and sus­tain civic part­ner­ships that are es­sen­tial in this day and age and you need pub­lic sup­port. You al­so need a can­di­date who has a high lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al in­tegri­ty. He must mean what he says and must not spread pro­pa­gan­da to un­du­ly af­fect the po­lice ser­vice rep­u­ta­tion. I will al­so rec­om­mend that the med­ical re­port should in­clude men­tal and emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty mea­sures,” Pro­fes­sor De­osaran rec­om­mend­ed.

The new Le­gal No­tice 277 will re­voke the pre­vi­ous one, Le­gal No­tice 183, which had guid­ed the process done by the for­mer PSC led by Bliss Seep­er­sad. This will now pave the way for a fresh start to the se­lec­tion of a sub­stan­tive top cop by the new PSC.

“It cre­ates a straight-line and it has a more mean­ing­ful ap­proach to the process of hir­ing a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as well an act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, so it has brought some stream­lin­ing of the process and that is quite a pos­i­tive step. How­ev­er, it will take some time for the le­gal no­tice and its pro­vi­sions to be ex­e­cut­ed be­cause there is need for new ad­ver­tise­ments now and I think that might re­al­ly take a few months,” De­osaran stat­ed.

He said it is left to be seen whether the re­cent­ly-in­stalled PSC will move to ap­point an act­ing com­mis­sion­er or jump straight in­to fill­ing the sub­stan­tive post.

An­oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion he made is for the full list of nom­i­nees to be sub­mit­ted to the Par­lia­ment at the same time so that the pub­lic is made aware of who is on the list.

This is a point al­so raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, which not­ed yes­ter­day that the list com­piled by the pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion was “con­tro­ver­sial” and “con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.”

The body’s pres­i­dent, In­spec­tor Gideon Dick­son, told Guardian Me­dia, “That in it­self was not fair for all the per­sons who sub­mit­ted them­selves to be part of the process.

“We had serv­ing ca­reer of­fi­cers who would have been el­e­vat­ed through­out the ranks, who would have at­tempt­ed to be part of the process and were not able to move on to the next and fi­nal phase. They have law en­force­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, they have ed­u­ca­tion qual­i­fi­ca­tions; law en­force­ment ex­pe­ri­ence and they were not af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty.” The new le­gal no­tice al­so elim­i­nates the pre­vi­ous clause which al­lowed con­tract­ed peo­ple to act in the post and now on­ly al­lows some­one from with­in the TTPS ranks to fill the act­ing post.

Ac­cord­ing to In­spec­tor Dick­son, this has giv­en of­fi­cers hope.

“Our on­ly is­sue with the le­gal no­tice is the fact that when you have al­ready se­lect­ed your can­di­dates and you have cre­at­ed your mer­it list, they are say­ing when an act­ing va­can­cy comes up, the per­son next in line to act, that name must go be­fore the Par­lia­ment for an in­ter­ro­ga­tion and we be­lieve that isn’t nec­es­sary,” Dick­son said.

He added that the PSC is an in­de­pen­dent body and should be al­lowed to do its job, while Par­lia­ment should sim­ply pro­vide the body with the le­gal frame­work. He said the process for ap­point­ing the Chief of De­fence Staff, Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er and Chief Fire of­fi­cer do not un­der­go such scruti­ny.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that the re­cent changes are a “step in the right di­rec­tion.”