Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der now says there is no rift in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), and his com­ments call­ing for sup­port of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro were not di­rect­ed at any of­fi­cer in par­tic­u­lar.

He said yes­ter­day he did not re­veal any on­go­ing frac­ture in the lead­er­ship of the TTPS, but rather is­sued a call for of­fi­cers of all ranks to re­dou­ble their com­mit­ment to ser­vice.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at a pass­ing-out cer­e­mo­ny and pa­rade for new­ly con­firmed po­lice of­fi­cers on Mon­day, Alexan­der urged of­fi­cers to leave the TTPS if they felt they had noth­ing left to con­tribute to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“With­in re­cent times, we have no­ticed a lot of per­sons not re­al­ly giv­ing that lev­el of sup­port that is nec­es­sary in or­der to chal­lenge this present state of crime that we have,” Alexan­der said.

He al­so re­mind­ed of­fi­cers that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was the TTPS leader, not­ing they should not “feel hurt they did not get the job.”

And while the re­marks have been per­ceived as a sub­tle jab at un­suc­cess­ful can­di­dates for the role of com­mis­sion­er, in­clud­ing present deputy com­mis­sion­ers, Alexan­der said his com­ments were not in­tend­ed to at­tack or den­i­grate any­one, as he made them “gen­er­al­ly,” for all of­fi­cers present.

“On that day, I re­ferred to every­body and any­body who felt that their ser­vice to the pub­lic was fin­ished. Peo­ple who felt they had giv­en enough and had noth­ing else to give... all I was say­ing is don’t just stick around. If you could not give your best any­more, leave and give some­one else an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the peo­ple of T&T.

“So it had noth­ing to do with any in­di­vid­ual, it wasn’t an at­tack on the in­sti­tu­tion or the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to his own ex­pe­ri­ence as a po­lice­man, Alexan­der said in­ter­nal dis­putes over lead­er­ship were not un­com­mon, but that he did not feel there was any rift with­in the cur­rent po­lice lead­er­ship.

“I, too, have no­ticed some things hap­pen­ing in the po­lice ser­vice, and they didn’t be­gin to­day, yes­ter­day, or the day be­fore that, or even the year be­fore. If I’m in a po­si­tion now to change the or­gan­i­sa­tion pos­i­tive­ly, then I can’t see these things hap­pen­ing still and con­done them,” he said.

“When I re­mind­ed peo­ple that the race was over and that Mr Gue­var­ro was now push­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion for­ward, I don’t un­der­stand how peo­ple could feel they were cheat­ed in one way or an­oth­er.

“This Gov­ern­ment didn’t pick his name from a hat. We se­lect­ed the per­son who came first in the test and gave him the job.”

Alexan­der al­so said the com­ments were in­tend­ed as a re­minder for First Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cers (of­fi­cers of the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice and above) not to ne­glect street-lev­el polic­ing and to be part of field ex­er­cis­es when nec­es­sary.

‘Ask Alexan­der’

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son, said he was al­so un­aware of any rift in the ser­vice and did not want to speak di­rect­ly to Alexan­der’s re­marks.

He main­tained, how­ev­er, that he may not be privy to the in­for­ma­tion Alexan­der has avail­able, not­ing that if such frac­tures ex­ist­ed with­in the lead­er­ship, they should be dealt with im­me­di­ate­ly.

Dick­son al­so urged of­fi­cers to act re­spon­si­bly and with ma­tu­ri­ty de­spite what­ev­er mis­giv­ings they may have with oth­er mem­bers of the lead­er­ship.

“If it ex­ists, then it should re­al­ly and tru­ly be some­thing we guard against and be pro­fes­sion­al enough to un­der­stand what is re­quired is uni­ty. It is through a uni­fied ap­proach we would be able to ad­dress in­ter­nal con­cerns and the con­cerns of our cit­i­zen­ry, which ex­pects us to pro­vide pre­mier law en­force­ment,” Dick­son said.

DCP Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin al­so de­clined to com­ment di­rect­ly on Alexan­der’s re­marks, in­stead main­tain­ing the TTPS was firm­ly com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing its man­date with ser­vice and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in mind.

He not­ed that Alexan­der’s re­marks may have been in­tend­ed to ral­ly sup­port rather than high­light any rift in lead­er­ship.

“As far as I’m con­cerned, it’s about keep­ing the TTPS fo­cused on our mis­sion and en­sur­ing all of us are shoot­ing to­wards the same goal, and I think that was the in­tent of the min­is­ter. We take it in­struc­tive­ly that we re­main fo­cused.

“If per­sons for some rea­son prob­a­bly have not shared that vi­sion, then we need to get fo­cused. But I can’t pin­point ex­act­ly that there is seg­re­ga­tion, though there’s al­ways a need to re­main fo­cused.”

DCP in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Natasha George, via What­sApp, de­clined to give her take on the mat­ter.

“He (Alexan­der) might be the best per­son to re­spond as he may have in­for­ma­tion that I am not privy to.”

How­ev­er, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said he agreed with Alexan­der’s re­marks that all of­fi­cers should ral­ly be­hind the cur­rent lead­er­ship to pro­vide a more uni­fied front against crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Re­fer­ring to his ex­pe­ri­ence, Grif­fith claimed se­nior of­fi­cers were al­so un­hap­py with his di­rect, vis­i­ble style of polic­ing and said Gue­var­ro should ur­gent­ly act against any­one seek­ing to un­der­mine his au­thor­i­ty.

“They will try to do as much as pos­si­ble to sab­o­tage him. He needs to be strong enough to with­stand that, and there will be peo­ple, be­cause of their own per­son­al agen­da, who will be con­cerned with his style of lead­er­ship.”

Grif­fith al­so said Gue­var­ro should be open-mind­ed enough to ac­cept con­struc­tive crit­i­cism as CoP.

‘There will al­ways be in­ter­nal pol­i­tics’

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so said he was un­aware of any rift but ac­knowl­edged that the TTPS, like any oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion, would have in­ter­nal pol­i­tics over who should hold a lead­er­ship role.

He, how­ev­er, warned that such dif­fer­ences should not be al­lowed to ham­per the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, not­ing how cru­cial this was to pub­lic safe­ty.

“There is al­ways the lit­tle pol­i­tics that hap­pens in any or­gan­i­sa­tion, but what we should be aware of is if we let this pol­i­tics cre­ate an­i­mosi­ties and af­fect the ef­fec­tive­ness of the po­lice ser­vice, it hin­ders crime-fight­ing.

“This be­comes even more prob­lem­at­ic if the al­leged rift ex­ists at the se­nior man­age­ment lev­els.

“We have to recog­nise that per­son­al­i­ties dif­fer, peo­ple dif­fer, but we have to put the big­ger pic­ture first and see the im­por­tant role of the po­lice ser­vice in the coun­try, its im­por­tance for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and put these things aside as best as we could.”