Camille Clarke

Act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to pre­cept sol­diers is ac­cept­able as long as it fights crime.The con­tro­ver­sial De­fence (Amend­ment) Bill was passed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day 15 while mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion raised sev­er­al ob­jec­tions against it.

In an in­ter­view with re­porters yes­ter­day at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of 70 po­lice of­fi­cers at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my in St James, Williams said there is a short­age of man­pow­er in the Po­lice Ser­vice by about 1,500 of­fi­cers.

"As you recog­nise from my re­lease on Sat­ur­day, we have to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent po­si­tions as it re­lates to the bill. That is rea­son­able that he (pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Anand Rame­sar) is pur­su­ing the man­date of his mem­ber­ship. I am look­ing at the gen­er­al in­ter­est of the Po­lice Ser­vice and so­ci­ety at large," he said.

Williams said the short­age of po­lice of­fi­cers is the prob­lem."If they want to use mem­bers of the De­fence Force why should I refuse that as­sis­tance? In that con­text I ap­pre­ci­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty of De­fence Force per­son­nel work­ing in the ser­vice be­cause they been do­ing that for the past few years," he said.

Williams said there are al­so re­tired of­fi­cers and city po­lice con­tribut­ing."How can we con­trol crime? With the po­lice and the sol­diers work­ing to­geth­er we will be able to con­trol crime. I am not say­ing this is the sole so­lu­tion but is an op­por­tu­ni­ty that we should take ad­van­tage of. I would read­i­ly ac­cept any pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence," he said.Williams said if as­sis­tance would come in any form it would be ac­cept­ed and sol­diers would not need the six-month train­ing that re­cruits need.