Shane Su­perville

Re­tired Snr Supt of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion John­ny Abra­ham has de­scribed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of the po­lice ser­vice as "lead­er­less" and in­ef­fec­tive in crime fight­ing.

Abra­ham gained pop­u­lar­i­ty as an out­spo­ken crime fight­er and served as head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and even­tu­al­ly in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion be­fore re­tir­ing in 2015.

Speak­ing at the open floor seg­ment of the UNC's An­ti-Crime town hall meet­ing at the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph, on Mon­day night, Abra­ham ac­cused the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of po­lice lead­ers of fail­ing to in­spire sub­or­di­nates to con­front crim­i­nals.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that some se­nior of­fi­cers at­tained their rank through aca­d­e­m­ic prowess and favouritism rather than crime-fight­ing abil­i­ty.

"I would go on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion and I would warn crim­i­nals to stay out of cen­tral and if they do come and leave to tell the sto­ry then that's an­oth­er sto­ry. And there is no lead­er­ship in the po­lice ser­vice. And the rea­son for that is be­cause some per­sons went and got el­e­vat­ed be­cause of friend­ship, be­cause of clique, " he said to some ap­plause.

"While I was on the ground fight­ing crime, they were study­ing. The thing about the whole po­lice ser­vice now is peo­ple are afraid to take the chal­lenge to the crim­i­nals. They have no lead­ers; they have no lead­er­ship."

Re­call­ing his ex­pe­ri­ences in ral­ly­ing a po­lice re­sponse to an up­surge in gang killings in Ch­agua­nas in 2015, Abra­ham said he was ca­pa­ble of se­cur­ing the en­tire Cen­tral Di­vi­sion us­ing on­ly five strate­gi­cal­ly placed po­lice ve­hi­cles.

He al­so not­ed that the in­volve­ment of di­vi­sion­al lead­ers in the an­ti-crime ac­tiv­i­ties was cru­cial in achiev­ing op­er­a­tional ob­jec­tives.