Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day ad­vised ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) that they were free to “walk away” at any time, if they felt un­able to work with the man in charge and serve as the job de­mands.

He hint­ed at ten­sions among the hi­er­ar­chy as he said, “You can­not go for­ward in an in­sti­tu­tion where you are fight­ing each oth­er. You are not lov­ing each oth­er. You are not sup­port­ing each oth­er.”

The sur­prise warn­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Pass­ing Out Pa­rade at the Po­lice Acad­e­my, St James—left of­fi­cers whis­per­ing while un­easy glances were ex­changed.

Pro­vid­ing a glow­ing en­dorse­ment of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress, Alexan­der re­in­forced to the se­nior of­fi­cers present, “You have a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that is will­ing to go the ex­tra mile and sup­port is nec­es­sary.”

“Nec­es­sary, be­cause 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.”

Sig­nalling his sup­port of Gue­var­ro, he went on, “If there are per­sons sit­ting here who thinks for one rea­son or an­oth­er, that they no longer will­ing to serve, a piece of pa­per with your name on it, that you would have come to an end of your ser­vice, that you no longer want to serve and have some­one re­place you, it is as sim­ple as that.”

Ques­tion­ing what mes­sage was be­ing sent to ju­nior of­fi­cers if this type of back-bit­ing and in-fight­ing was to con­tin­ue, Alexan­der asked, “What good is it to us as the mem­bers of the pub­lic on the out­side are see­ing it. The crim­i­nal el­e­ment is see­ing it and that is why some­times they walk with­out you notic­ing them, be­cause you are think­ing about oth­er things and they are pass­ing right be­fore you with their AR 15.”

He de­clared, “The time has come, ei­ther you bond to­geth­er or please al­low us, by any law­ful means nec­es­sary, to sep­a­rate you from the pack.”

Ad­mit­ting it had be­come nec­es­sary to say this pub­licly now, he went on, “With mem­bers of the pub­lic watch­ing and with the re­cruits watch­ing, they are look­ing for lead­ers.”

“Lead­ers who can fight with them. Lead­ers who can talk with them. Lead­ers who can walk with them and show them the way. If you don’t walk and talk with each oth­er, who can you teach when per­sons watch­ing and no­body don’t want to lis­ten to you?”

“The time has come to change the game. If you have a CoP will­ing to sup­port you, sup­port.”

A smat­ter­ing of ap­plause and cheer­ing was heard as Alexan­der re­it­er­at­ed, “The race has al­ready gone. There is no ap­pli­ca­tion for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice so there is no rea­son to feel hurt that you did not get through with the job. Just do the job or get out, and let some­body else do the job.”

Alexan­der lat­er said his love for coun­try and ser­vice had led him to ad­dress se­nior of­fi­cers as can­did­ly as he did.

Pressed to say why this fo­rum had been utilised when the sen­ti­ments could have been ex­pressed pri­vate­ly and be­hind closed doors—he said, “Some­times you have to move the nee­dle, and when you move the nee­dle, you achieve things.”

He said the aim to “get the po­lice ser­vice to move full speed ahead was mov­ing the nee­dle.”

While it was a mod­est Gue­var­ro who lat­er said he ac­cept­ed the min­is­ter’s en­dorse­ment, he re­fused to com­ment on the in­ti­ma­tion that a rift ex­ist­ed with­in his ex­ec­u­tive.

In­stead, he said, “The min­is­ter spoke and I have no au­thor­i­ty to speak af­ter the min­is­ter and what he said.”