He­len Dray­ton

We can de­scribe many jobs as chal­leng­ing, but few match the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers, the lat­ter in wartime. But the on­ly war we face is the one against crim­i­nals. In that dead­ly bat­tle, the front-line peo­ple, risk­ing life and limb every day, are our good po­lice of­fi­cers. We have just seen ap­palling sta­tis­tics from the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty on the al­leged rogues in the Po­lice Ser­vice. But we must re­mem­ber, too, that for every rogue, there are over 20 good ones, ded­i­cat­ed, com­mit­ted, and work­ing round the clock to pro­tect and serve us. As bad as crime is, were it not for those of­fi­cers, the sit­u­a­tion would be much worse.

Those who live up to the Po­lice Ser­vice mot­to “to pro­tect and serve with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­spect, in­tegri­ty, dig­ni­ty and ex­cel­lence—PRIDE” are our pro­tec­tors. They de­serve our re­spect and en­cour­age­ment. The rogues with­in must be flushed out. Sug­ges­tion: It might be help­ful to re­view the Po­lice Reg­u­la­tions on the dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dure to make it an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive sys­tem.

Al­so it may be use­ful for the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er in con­sul­ta­tion with the TTPS and the Po­lice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, mak­ing body cam­eras manda­to­ry once of­fi­cers are on du­ty. Coun­tries have found them ben­e­fi­cial in pro­vid­ing cred­i­ble video ev­i­dence that helps po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions and court pro­ceed­ings. Body cam­eras should be a pri­or­i­ty if a se­ri­ous prob­lem is of­fi­cers’ abuse of au­thor­i­ty and ques­tion­able killings? The de­vices will al­so serve to clear of­fi­cers against al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing.

All hon­est of­fi­cers should re­flect deeply on the “band of broth­ers” cul­ture that shields rogue of­fi­cers who bring the in­sti­tu­tion in­to dis­re­pute. Still, most of our po­lice of­fi­cers are good peo­ple, with fam­i­lies feel­ing the same fears and pain we feel.

Based on vic­tims’ pub­lic state­ments and oth­er gen­er­al com­men­taries, there ap­pears to be an in­creas­ing lack of con­fi­dence in the au­thor­i­ties’ abil­i­ty to deal de­ci­sive­ly with the crime sit­u­a­tion. Gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens have lived through ter­ror in their com­mu­ni­ties. They con­tin­ue to do so from in­fan­cy to adult­hood. The au­thor­i­ties have been un­able to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal gangs on an is­land that one could vir­tu­al­ly dri­ve around in a day. It is hard to ac­cept that gang­sters can con­tin­ue to make war on each oth­er and cause com­mu­ni­ties to be­come killing fields and law en­forcers can­not do any­thing while chil­dren live out their night­mares.

Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al states, “Gun vi­o­lence is a con­tem­po­rary glob­al hu­man rights is­sue. Gun-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence threat­ens our most fun­da­men­tal hu­man right, the right to life.” Al­so, “When peo­ple are afraid of gun vi­o­lence, this can al­so have a neg­a­tive im­pact on peo­ple’s right to ed­u­ca­tion or health care when they are too afraid to at­tend schools or health fa­cil­i­ties or if these ser­vices are not ful­ly func­tion­ing due to firearm vi­o­lence in their com­mu­ni­ty.”

The firearm homi­cide rate is ris­ing world­wide. Re­gard­less of the coun­tries’ crime-fight­ing so­phis­ti­ca­tion, gov­ern­ments and their po­lice face daunt­ing chal­lenges. Near­ly every­where, cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­ence trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions dai­ly. Some must con­tend with wars, eth­nic vi­o­lence, famine, and de­pri­va­tion that dev­as­tate their lives. Our prob­lem isn’t unique. How­ev­er, wide­spread crime in a small coun­try is in­tol­er­a­ble. We must stop mak­ing ex­cus­es for adults who choose crime as a way of life.

We in­stall bur­glar proof­ing, cam­eras, and alarms, pay neigh­bour­hood se­cu­ri­ty fees and look back, left, and right to see who is around. And too, we must con­tend with an ir­reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­ply, buy wa­ter tanks, pay to main­tain all, throw away spoilt food be­cause of elec­tric­i­ty out­ages, and will have to pay prop­er­ty tax for no im­prove­ment in ser­vice. We pay a high price for our tol­er­ance, and we for­give as eas­i­ly as we ra­ma­jay.

Com­pound­ing cit­i­zens’ stress is un­hinged com­mu­ni­ca­tion that shat­ters con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment. Killings with le­gal guns, il­le­gal guns com­ing through ports and cus­toms, and un­law­ful quar­ry­ing linked to crime are over 60-years-old stale news. So, the Min­is­ter and the Po­lice Ser­vice do them­selves no good by sound­ing as though they had just found out. Con­stant­ly pub­lish­ing big hauls of high-pow­ered weapon­ry, drug finds, and dis­cov­ery of lush mar­i­jua­na fields begs the ob­vi­ous ques­tion. Why is no one ar­rest­ed and charged? Per­haps they are, but we are on­ly bom­bard­ed with mur­ders and weapons, height­en­ing fears and forc­ing le­git­i­mate ques­tions about com­pe­tence. Sug­ges­tion: If the goal is to pub­lish suc­cess­es, then it will be wise to do so in a way that in­spires con­fi­dence.