The proverb, a new broom sweeps clean, means that peo­ple who are new­ly ap­point­ed can make far-reach­ing and in­ci­sive changes. Such changes could be per­son­nel, sys­tems or sim­ply the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­tro­duce new tech­niques. The proverb has an ad­di­tion­al di­men­sion in that an old broom knows the cor­ners.  Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, is a ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cer and a new broom who knows the cor­ners. Her ap­point­ment al­so brings an added di­men­sion as it breaks the prover­bial glass ceil­ing.

What mat­ters is re­sults. Ac­cord­ing to Deng Xi­aop­ing (Chi­nese rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader, mil­i­tary com­man­der and states­man), it does not mat­ter if the cat is black or white as long as it eats mice. There are many is­sues of dis­ci­pline and work prac­tices with­in the ser­vice that must be ad­dressed. News­pa­per re­ports and cas­es be­fore the courts sug­gest that there are el­e­ments with­in the po­lice ser­vice who are there to serve their per­son­al in­ter­est, not to pro­tect and serve the in­ter­ests of the pub­lic. Since re­cruit­ment comes from the same hu­man re­source pool, a key task is to im­prove the re­cruit­ment process, in ad­di­tion to the dis­ci­pline lev­els with­in the ser­vice.  

En­sur­ing that re­sults are ob­tained by mak­ing con­se­quen­tial changes to polic­ing meth­ods and the brand of polic­ing de­ployed will mat­ter. Those changes must be deep-root­ed and pos­i­tive­ly re­in­forced to en­sure the ben­e­fits are long-last­ing. This is not a job for one per­son and the po­lice ser­vice lead­er­ship will need to be re­aligned to sup­port these ob­jec­tives. Man­age­ment re­quires a team ef­fort, with pos­i­tive lead­er­ship to di­rect sub­or­di­nates and col­leagues.  

Op­por­tu­ni­ties come dressed in work­ing clothes and there has been no short­age of op­por­tu­ni­ties. There is the case of miss­ing am­mu­ni­tion, which un­like the co­caine at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion could not have been eat­en by the rats. The re­cent re­port on hu­man traf­fick­ing and the im­por­tant ex­pla­na­tion by the US Am­bas­sador that the term “Gov­ern­ment Of­fi­cial” in­cludes not on­ly PM, Min­is­ter, MPs, and Sen­a­tors but al­so any­one who works in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. This in­cludes per­son­nel from Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion, the De­fence Force and the TTPS.  An­nounc­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is the easy part.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the mur­der toll has ac­cel­er­at­ed and is cur­rent­ly 13 per cent high­er than in 2022. This is the biggest op­por­tu­ni­ty, to change the key met­ric on which cit­i­zens fo­cus. Ap­pear­ing be­fore the sec­ond ses­sion of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee dis­cussing an­ti-crime strate­gies used by the po­lice ser­vice to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in the coun­try, the Com­mis­sion­er made the bold promise that the mur­der rate would be re­duced by the end of June.

No de­tails on the spe­cif­ic strate­gies to be adopt­ed to achieve this ob­jec­tive were giv­en. Nei­ther has the Com­mis­sion­er re­spond­ed to news­pa­per in­quiries on the mech­a­nisms that would be em­ployed to achieve this ob­jec­tive. That is her pre­rog­a­tive and judge­ment, which is fair. It would be a mis­take to as­sume ei­ther that the ban­dits are un­in­tel­li­gent, or that they do not read the news­pa­pers. Such plans are best kept se­cret, if not qui­et.

Few will ar­gue about the tac­tics and strat­e­gy if the Com­mis­sion­er achieves her ob­jec­tive. Her cred­i­bil­i­ty and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the TTPS are at stake. Many of the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tions are al­ready un­der­per­form­ing, in­clud­ing the TTPS. In the fi­nal analy­sis, the Com­mis­sion­er’s suc­cess will be the coun­try’s suc­cess. We wish her well.