There is no doubt that Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has de­cid­ed to make his time at the top of our Po­lice Ser­vice a trans­for­ma­tion­al, if not al­so con­tro­ver­sial, one. His lan­guage to crim­i­nals—and his own force—is un­com­pro­mis­ing, prov­ing pop­u­lar with a pop­u­la­tion fed up with both vi­o­lence and poor polic­ing.

He will have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to show the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is turn­ing a cor­ner dur­ing Car­ni­val.

It won't be hard for him to demon­strate progress in how dis­ci­pline and pro­fes­sion­al­ism must be dis­played by his force as last year's Car­ni­val clocked one of the high­est 'no-shows' in his­to­ry of both po­lice of­fi­cers and spe­cial re­serve mem­bers.

So much for their oath to pro­tect and serve with pride. Or their as­so­ci­a­tion's mot­to, 'Ser­vice Be­fore Self'.

Their ab­sence was even more wor­ry­ing giv­en that last year's Car­ni­val was played un­der a se­ri­ous ter­ror threat which led all ma­jor diplo­mat­ic mis­sions in T&T to ad­vise their cit­i­zens to stay away from Mas.

In a typ­i­cal case of cor­po­rate car­ni­val hang­over, the Po­lice Ser­vice was al­so quite for­get­ful when asked last year what it planned to do (and did) to those who didn't both­er to turn up for work when ex­pect­ed to do so.

Even more puz­zling though, those who did show up were re­ward­ed with ad­di­tion­al pay and leave (es­sen­tial­ly re­ward­ed for turn­ing up to do their nor­mal job when ros­tered to do so).

Ex­cus­es for the ab­surd­ly high lev­els of ab­sen­teeism ranged from poor con­di­tions on the ground to the fact that of­fi­cers al­so re­sent hav­ing to work through­out Car­ni­val with­out be­ing able to 'par­take in the cul­tur­al of­fer­ings of the is­land', as once ex­plained by the leader of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (the force's de fac­to union), Michael Seales.

Clear­ly some­one for­got to men­tion to all po­lice re­cruits, in­clud­ing Mr Seales him­self, that the de­mands on the po­lice are high­er, not low­er, ex­act­ly when the na­tion is 'par­tak­ing' in ma­jor mo­ments, cul­tur­al or not.

But of­fi­cial ex­pla­na­tions aside, most peo­ple sus­pect that the high lev­els of ab­sen­teeism are usu­al­ly down to a sim­pler rea­son: many of­fi­cers make good mon­ey by, in­stead, pro­vid­ing pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties.

At its most ba­sic, cit­i­zens have the right to be pro­tect­ed by the po­lice force they pay for when that pro­tec­tion is need­ed, and, as tax­pay­ers, we pay of­fi­cers to turn up for work when sched­uled to do the job.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith's pub­lic com­mit­ment to de­liv­er bet­ter polic­ing this Car­ni­val is a good start. It is al­so good to see Mr Seales is back­ing the move (al­though, and wor­ry­ing­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion's sup­port seems to be more mo­ti­vat­ed by promis­es of pro­mo­tions to its mem­bers than du­ty).

How­ev­er, the com­mis­sion­er has a big­ger and more com­plex chal­lenge. Al­though less vis­i­ble and hard­er to clean up than the piles of po­lice cars dumped at the acad­e­my's grounds, the Po­lice Ser­vice's hu­man re­sources and labour re­la­tions area is al­so in dire need of rein­ven­tion.

And it is ur­gent, if we are to stop the in­dis­ci­pline—as shown with Car­ni­val ab­sen­teeism—and the waste of pub­lic funds due to the mis­han­dling of the work­force.

Two re­cent and cost­ly court cas­es are good re­minders of what mis­man­age­ment at TTPS looks like.

In one, High Court judge James Aboud or­dered a woman po­lice of­fi­cer to be pro­mot­ed to the rank of sergeant back­dat­ed for three years af­ter find­ing she was treat­ed un­fair­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the judge's de­ci­sion, the Po­lice Ser­vice il­le­gal­ly by­passed of­fi­cer Ni­na Rawl­ins for pro­mo­tion back in 2016. It then failed to deal with her ap­peals and a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to then Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams al­so gen­er­at­ed no mean­ing­ful out­come.

In a sec­ond cost­ly blow to the Po­lice Ser­vice, al­so at the High Court, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad went as far as threat­en­ing con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings against Mr Grif­fith as the Po­lice failed to obey a court or­der from Oc­to­ber last year (al­though it is not clear whether it was prop­er­ly no­ti­fied of the or­der).

This is re­lat­ed to a de­ci­sion by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in favour of a now re­tired po­lice cor­po­ral who was or­dered to re­pay $450,000 af­ter his in­jury leave was retroac­tive­ly re­clas­si­fied, fol­low­ing a dis­pute over the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the ini­tial work­place in­jury claim.

Al­though the case took place un­der for­mer act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams' watch, the High Court rul­ing, de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate re­dress, was is­sued when Mr Grif­fith was al­ready in charge.

Whilst prais­ing Mr Grif­fith for his hands-on crime fight­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was spot on by stat­ing that 'the of­fice, how­ev­er, car­ries with it ex­ten­sive ad­min­is­tra­tion func­tions which must al­so be dis­charged with adept­ness, adroit­ness, alacrity and aplomb”.

What both cas­es demon­strate is that, if the TTPS were do­ing its HR job cor­rect­ly, it wouldn't have found it­self in the High Court so of­ten, los­ing such cost­ly cas­es and fur­ther tak­ing away lim­it­ed re­sources from crime fight­ing to help pay for their bun­gled in­ter­nal cas­es.

And its in­abil­i­ty to find the right out­comes when in­ves­ti­gat­ing its own in­ter­nal mat­ters no doubt fur­ther un­der­mines faith in the po­lice's abil­i­ty to solve crimes, usu­al­ly much more com­plex than staff is­sues.

Polic­ing and the run­ning of a po­lice force are com­plex mat­ters but, like any oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty, their ef­fec­tive­ness re­lies on sim­ple prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance, ad­min­is­tra­tive ef­fi­cien­cy, con­struc­tive labour re­la­tions, trans­paren­cy and clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith has a big task ahead of him, clear­ing up the mess left be­hind by his pre­de­ces­sors. Wise­ly, he has just or­dered a re­vamp of the force's le­gal de­part­ment to sort out its 150-odd pend­ing court cas­es. He al­so com­mit­ted to month­ly meet­ings with the So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion - al­ways a good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice.

Get­ting his force to ac­tu­al­ly turn up for work dur­ing Car­ni­val and deal­ing ex­em­plar­i­ly with those who don't may not be one of his biggest prob­lems but it sure will be fur­ther prove that he means busi­ness. And that his work­force is pay­ing at­ten­tion.