Geisha Kow­lessar

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was an "ex­cep­tion­al" min­is­ter and the dri­ving force to make the po­lice ser­vice more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive.So said act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams who paid glow­ing trib­ute to Warn­er yes­ter­day.The act­ing top cop was field­ing ques­tions from the me­dia af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Cap­i­tal Plaza, Port-of-Spain, of the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Po­lice Con­fer­ence.

He said: "He (Warn­er) has been an ex­cep­tion­al min­is­ter and an ex­cep­tion­al leader and I want to put that on record. He has im­pact­ed the po­lice ser­vice, even by way of some cul­tur­al things, in re­la­tion to per­for­mance and I am talk­ing pos­i­tive­ly."Any one of the lead­ers in the min­istry (na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty) will tell you the same thing. Mr Warn­er has been a big dri­ving force in re­la­tion to the ac­tiv­i­ties over the many months."

Asked to be more spe­cif­ic on Warn­er's per­for­mance, Williams said the po­lice ser­vice had changed the way of as­sess­ing per­for­mance, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lat­ed to da­ta col­lec­tion.He added: "With the ad­vent of min­is­ter Warn­er, at 6 am every mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive is ful­ly aware of what's hap­pen­ing in each di­vi­sion be­cause they have to ac­count for per­for­mance.

"Every morn­ing at 6 am we can tell you what is the sta­tus with crime across T&T and each re­gion­al ACP could tell you what is the con­di­tion with crime across his re­gion. Pri­or­to min­is­ter Warn­er that was not part of the cul­ture." Say­ing this was "now a norm" in the po­lice ser­vice, Williams added that Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son al­so was pro­vid­ed with dai­ly crime re­ports by all the ACPs be­tween 5 am and 5.30 am which in turn was re­layed to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

"Those ACPs would in turn have been up­dat­ed by each re­gion­al com­man­der of the di­vi­sions. So while some of you may be sleep­ing at 4 am the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent in charge of a di­vi­sion is on top of his game," Williams added.De­scrib­ing Warn­er as a "man of ac­tion," Williams said the for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter "caused" many pos­i­tive things to hap­pen in the po­lice ser­vice.

He added: "The is­sue of whether some­thing could hap­pen, that is not part of his (Warn­er's) vo­cab­u­lary. Part of his vo­cab­u­lary is how can we cause this to hap­pen. "The is­sue of chal­lenges, that's rel­e­vant to him–how can we dri­ve crime down, how can we get mur­ders down. That was his fo­cus."The po­lice ser­vice, how­ev­er, re­mained com­mit­ted to fight­ing crime and pro­vid­ing a safer en­vi­ron­ment, Williams said.