Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Since 2019, ap­prox­i­mate­ly one out of every 24 of­fi­cers in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has been charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence.

Over the last five years, more than 2,260 com­plaints were made to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) about the con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers. More than 1,640 were crim­i­nal com­plaints - an av­er­age of 328 crim­i­nal com­plaints a year.

From that, 204 cas­es were for­ward­ed by the PCA to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, 59 to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, and 33 were sent to both the CoP and the DPP.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, be­tween Jan­u­ary 2019 and Ju­ly 2023, 268 po­lice of­fi­cers ap­peared be­fore the courts on crim­i­nal charges - an av­er­age of five of­fi­cers aper month, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pro­vid­ed by T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son.

In 2021, 81 of­fi­cers ap­peared be­fore the court. Last year, 56 of­fi­cers ap­peared be­fore the court and so far this year 27 of­fi­cers have been be­fore the courts.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, for­mer Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob re­vealed that in the pre­vi­ous four years more than 500 po­lice of­fi­cers had been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the TTPS’ Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB).

There are around 6,500 po­lice of­fi­cers in the ser­vice.

Over the years, po­lice of­fi­cers have been charged with mur­der, rob­bery and ex­tor­tion:

- In Ju­ly 2022, eight of­fi­cers were charged with the mur­der of three men in Mor­vant in 2020. The mur­ders sparked out­rage in Port-of-Spain with pro­tes­tors march­ing through the city de­mand­ing jus­tice.

- Last Au­gust, a po­lice of­fi­cer was charged with killing col­league PC Clarence Gilkes in Diego Mar­tin. Ini­tial­ly, po­lice at the scene claimed a res­i­dent shot the of­fi­cer, and a con­tro­ver­sial man­hunt fol­lowed.

- In Feb­ru­ary, an act­ing po­lice in­spec­tor was charged with mis­be­hav­ior in pub­lic of­fice af­ter al­leged­ly so­lic­it­ing mon­ey from the own­er of a bar.

- Al­so in Feb­ru­ary, a po­lice of­fi­cer was charged with as­sault­ing a traf­fic war­den.

- In April, sev­en po­lice of­fi­cers were charged in con­nec­tion with the al­leged ex­tor­tion of sev­er­al busi­ness­es in San­gre Grande. They were charged with sev­er­al of­fences in­clud­ing mis­be­hav­ior in pub­lic of­fice.

- This month, an of­fi­cer ap­peared be­fore the courts for charges re­lat­ed to three dif­fer­ent mat­ters. He was charged with dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­ters of a road, com­mon as­sault and trans­fer­ring am­mu­ni­tion.

For some time there has been a pub­lic per­cep­tion that wide­spread cor­rup­tion ex­ists with­in the TTPS, as sup­port­ed by the find­ings of sev­er­al TTPS pub­lic con­fi­dence sur­veys over the years.

Last week Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form in San Fer­nan­do said: “One of the prob­lems that we have is that there are too many crim­i­nals in the po­lice ser­vice.”

He said that on FBI ad­vice, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to cre­ate a bet­ter-paid, spe­cial­ized ‘vet­ted’ unit in the TTPS.

“One of the re­quire­ments of that agree­ment is that we, in the po­lice ser­vice, in or­der to in­ter­act with their ser­vice and pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the op­er­a­tions, that we need to have vet­ted units, where we can re­ly on the in­tegri­ty of the of­fi­cers who will be giv­en cer­tain cor­ri­dors of ac­tiv­i­ty and cer­tain cor­ri­dors of in­for­ma­tion,” he said at post-Cab­i­net last week.

His an­nounce­ment of a vet­ted unit was crit­i­cized by some, in­clud­ing for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) mem­ber Mar­tin George and Dick­son.

Dick­son said the As­so­ci­a­tion will not be sup­port­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a new unit, giv­en that the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau, and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau al­ready ex­ist with sim­i­lar man­dates.

George, on the oth­er hand, said while the PM’s pro­pos­al sound­ed good on pa­per, it could be a recipe for dis­as­ter cre­at­ing a a feed­ing ground for greater cor­rup­tion.

Since 1958, the find­ings of sev­er­al re­ports and com­mit­tees have called for re­form of the TTPS, stat­ing cor­rup­tion was present. Among the re­ports/com­mit­tees were the O’Dowd Com­mi­tee in 1990, the Bruce Com­mi­tee in 1978, the Dar­by Com­mi­tee in 1964, the Po­lice Ex­ec­u­tive Re­search Fo­rum in 1990, the Carr Com­mi­tee in 1971 and the Lee Com­mi­tee in 1958. The Scott Drug Re­port, laid in Par­lia­ment in 1987, claimed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 to 50 per cent of of­fi­cers were cor­rupt.

Cor­rup­tion en­dem­ic to T&T’s so­ci­ety

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, peo­ple have to be very care­ful in la­belling the TTPS as cor­rupt, as to his knowl­edge, there are no re­li­able es­ti­mates of the ex­tent of cor­rup­tion in the ser­vice. The co­or­di­na­tor of UWI St Au­gus­tine’s Crim­i­nol­o­gy Unit ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the Prime Min­is­ter might be privy to da­ta that he does not have. Dr Row­ley is head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that some de­gree of cor­rup­tion ex­ists in the ser­vice and many oth­er pub­lic agen­cies as well, Dr Seep­er­sad said the PM’s idea of vet­ted units is a good one, but the mech­a­nisms for the unit to be ef­fec­tive must be put in place - some­thing he said will not be straight­for­ward.

“You can cre­ate the leg­is­la­tion. That’s not too hard to do. And, of course, it’s al­ready il­le­gal to en­gage in cor­rup­tion. You could put things in place for the cre­ation of these bod­ies (vet­ted units) and I al­so think the process­es are some­thing that could be fair­ly eas­i­ly done be­cause you could do back­ground checks, drug tests, psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing, char­ac­ter ref­er­ences from peo­ple in the neigh­bour­hoods.

“But what is re­al­ly the dif­fi­cult part is de­tect­ing and deal­ing with cor­rup­tion. Now the na­ture of cor­rup­tion is that it is very hid­den from view. Peo­ple would not go and ad­ver­tise that they are cor­rupt…And the kind of mon­ey as well in­volved in some kind of cor­rup­tion, let’s say you’re col­lud­ing with peo­ple who are sell­ing drugs or with crim­i­nals, you’re go­ing to be get­ting cut­backs, and quite of­ten those cut­backs could be quite sub­stan­tial com­pared to what you are earn­ing. And that’s a big in­cen­tive. And there’s a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion among some per­sons in the po­lice ser­vice - they will op­er­ate as a closed unit, and peo­ple wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Seep­er­sad, much like the coun­try’s prob­lems with mur­ders, there are like­ly to be is­sues with de­tec­tion giv­en that cor­rup­tion is en­dem­ic to T&T so­ci­ety. He rec­om­mend­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter pull ex­perts to­geth­er to try to fig­ure out how to de­vel­op ef­fec­tive process­es and means to gath­er in­for­ma­tion and suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cute cor­rupt of­fi­cers.

“I would tell you that one of the things they should do when they write that leg­is­la­tion is mak­ing the penal­ties so stiff that po­lice of­fi­cers are re­al­ly go­ing to think twice or three times. That would be my hon­est thought. And that is some­thing by it­self that could prob­a­bly put a very quick and se­ri­ous dent. I’m not some­one who is gen­er­al­ly in sup­port of ex­ces­sive­ly se­vere penal­ties, but un­der some cir­cum­stances, se­vere penal­ties are war­rant­ed.

“The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is try­ing to push a bill that will al­low for back­ground checks to be done on peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice across the board, so we could try to de­tect if there’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cor­rup­tion, for ex­am­ple by us­ing Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit da­ta to see if peo­ple have funds far above what they’re earn­ing.

“So the big­ger pic­ture is that there is in­deed cor­rup­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go which stymies de­vel­op­ment. It re­al­ly has a very, very neg­a­tive col­lec­tive ef­fect on our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. And in the case of the Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er pro­tec­tive ser­vices, cor­rup­tion is some­thing that could work against deal­ing with the crime sit­u­a­tion,” the crim­i­nol­o­gist said.

Asked if rais­ing the en­try re­quire­ments for po­lice of­fi­cers could po­ten­tial­ly lift the stan­dard of polic­ing, Dr Seep­er­sad said cur­rent en­try stan­dards are ac­cept­able, giv­en the lev­els of train­ing and vet­ting avail­able.

“Yes, there is the ar­gu­ment that if you raise the bar you help in the pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of the ser­vice by at­tract­ing per­sons of a dif­fer­ent cal­i­bre. But hav­ing said that, we cre­ate a low bar, but oth­er en­ti­ties in the coun­try set the bar at the same lev­el. And we bring the can­di­dates at that lev­el up to an­oth­er lev­el. Let me give you an ex­am­ple.

“At UWI or UTT, you may know that with five O’lev­els - in­clud­ing Maths and Eng­lish, which is about the same re­quire­ment for the ser­vice - you can get in­to an en­try-lev­el cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme or a prepara­to­ry pro­gramme that once you pass it, and that’s a one-year pro­gramme - this will al­low you to ma­tric­u­late in­to a bach­e­lor pro­gramme.

“If you could do some­thing like that at uni­ver­si­ty - and I’ve seen many stu­dents come through that route eh - and they fin­ish their de­gree, go on­to their mas­ters . . . I hon­est­ly don’t see why we can’t be do­ing it at the Po­lice Ser­vice as well, and the train­ing is there, the vet­ting is there, so that the per­son is brought up to a cer­tain stan­dard that they can serve as a po­lice of­fi­cer,” he said.

Cre­ate a Na­tion­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Ac­cord­ing to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah, it can­not be dis­missed that there are rogue el­e­ments in the Po­lice Ser­vice and all arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing im­mi­gra­tion, Cus­toms and Ex­cise, as well as the Min­istry of Fi­nance. He said the idea of a spe­cial vet­ted unit with ex­tra pay is not bad, but it opens up many por­tals for neg­a­tive fall­outs, re­sis­tance and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Heer­ah be­lieves a more ef­fec­tive op­tion would be form­ing a Na­tion­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“What we need is a na­tion­al unit, prop­er­ly vet­ted, prop­er­ly paid and re­sourced to in­ves­ti­gate of­fi­cers from all na­tion­al agen­cies and not on­ly Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. This unit must have the au­thor­i­ty and the gov­ern­ing Act/Leg­is­la­tion to car­ry out its du­ties. Be­cause, with­out that mus­cle any­thing be­ing hur­ried­ly planned and es­tab­lished with­out thor­ough checks and bal­ances, with­out thor­ough re­search and ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, with­out ex­am­in­ing the pros and cons and with­out spear­head­ing a pi­lot project ap­proach, would be ex­posed to se­ri­ous le­gal chal­lenges, that could be em­bar­rass­ing.

“Pat­tern this unit in par­al­lel to the in­ter­na­tion­al mod­els, and let this be the unit to in­ves­ti­gate rogue of­fi­cers from all na­tion­al agen­cies, cor­rup­tion at all lev­els and Transna­tion­al Or­ga­nized Crime. There can be a con­sid­er­a­tion to ex­pand this mod­el to ser­vice the Cari­com ge­o­graph­ics, with a CBI - Caribbean Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (CBI),” he said.

HMI­CRFS Re­port - Sys­tem­at­ic mea­sure of po­lice cor­rup­tion does not ex­ist (put in box)

While cor­rup­tion is en­dem­ic in the TTPS, a sys­tem­at­ic mea­sure of po­lice cor­rup­tion does not ex­ist in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of His Majesty’s In­spec­torate of Con­stab­u­lary and Fire and Res­cue Ser­vices (HMI­CRFS) As­sess­ment on Gang-re­lat­ed Homi­cide and Po­lice Cor­rup­tion in T&T.

The British Crim­i­nal Jus­tice In­spec­torate, HMI­CRFS, as­sess­es the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of po­lice forces and fire and res­cue ser­vices. The as­sess­ment was com­mis­sioned to ex­am­ine the cur­rent state of re­search ev­i­dence on gang vi­o­lence and po­lice cor­rup­tion in T&T.

The find­ings were pub­lished in March.

“A sys­tem­at­ic mea­sure of po­lice cor­rup­tion does not ex­ist in the coun­try. How­ev­er, a small body of re­search in­di­cates in­ci­dences of cor­rup­tion with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice, with links to ex­ces­sive use of force, the il­lic­it drug trade and gang in­volve­ment. Pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys re­veal a wide­spread per­cep­tion of po­lice cor­rup­tion.

“A num­ber of de­ter­mi­nants have been shown to in­flu­ence lev­els of po­lice cor­rup­tion and are linked to the wider na­tion­al and or­ga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture in which a po­lice force is em­bed­ded, as well as sit­u­a­tion­al and in­di­vid­ual fac­tors such as po­lice at­ti­tudes, be­liefs and ex­pe­ri­ence of alien­ation. Any strat­e­gy de­vel­oped to ad­dress cor­rup­tion with­in the TTPS will need to bear all of these fac­tors in­to ac­count and pri­or­i­tize the need to ad­dress the ap­par­ent en­dem­ic po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion with­in the na­tion in which the TTPS is em­bed­ded,” the as­sess­ment found.

In its rec­om­men­da­tions to tack­le po­lice cor­rup­tion in T&T, the as­sess­ment said it is im­por­tant to rec­og­nize that the TTPS is in­flu­enced by a wider sys­tem of gov­er­nance in the coun­try. It said, there­fore, that any at­tempts to re­form cor­rup­tion in the ser­vice are un­like­ly to reach their full po­ten­tial with­out sup­port, recog­ni­tion and in­vest­ment from the gov­ern­ment.

“Strate­gies should be con­sid­ered that pro­mote an or­ga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of in­tegri­ty and by so do­ing, re­in­force staff re­silience to cor­rup­tion. This would re­quire: Lead­er­ship and se­nior of­fi­cers with­in the force to be sup­port­ive of the re­form process and ‘set the ex­am­ple’ to all of­fi­cers of low­er ranks; Re­cruit­ment process­es that ad­e­quate­ly as­sess of­fi­cers for views and char­ac­ter­is­tics, which are sup­port­ive of an eth­i­cal and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to polic­ing; In­vest­ment in on­go­ing staff train­ing and re­view for of­fi­cers of all ranks, with a fo­cus up­on ethics, in­tegri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing meth­ods.

“Links with job dis­sat­is­fac­tion, ‘alien­ation’ and cor­rup­tion to be borne in mind, and po­lice equipped with ad­e­quate re­source and sup­port to un­der­take their role. The stress and de­mand of the role would need to be rec­og­nized by man­age­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing the pro­vi­sion of prac­ti­cal and emo­tion­al sup­port to of­fi­cers through­out the TTPS; a clear re­port­ing process to be de­vel­oped for of­fi­cers of all ranks through­out the TTPS to re­port their con­cerns, with re­as­sur­ance that all re­ports of cor­rup­tion and/or mis­con­duct will be dealt with fair­ly and trans­par­ent­ly and cru­cial­ly, that ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will be tak­en; em­pha­sis on the im­por­tance of an in­de­pen­dent po­lice com­plaints process. Sim­i­lar­ly, at­ten­tion should be giv­en to en­sur­ing the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and an­ti-cor­rup­tion leg­is­la­tion is ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed and ad­hered to,” it rec­om­mend­ed.

Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice

Be­tween 2007 and 2023, six dif­fer­ent com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice led the TTPS. The longest-serv­ing CoP dur­ing that pe­ri­od was Stephen Williams who act­ed in the post be­tween 2012 and 2018. As part of their man­dates, the CoPs promised to tack­le cor­rup­tion in the ser­vice.

In 2009, for­mer Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert over­saw an au­dit of po­lice sta­tions that he said would en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. Lat­er that year, he re­vealed that 250 of­fi­cers were sus­pend­ed be­tween 2014 and 2019 for se­ri­ous of­fences. Philbert was fired af­ter three years in of­fice.

In 2010, for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs called on the pub­lic to as­sist the TTPS in re­mov­ing rogue el­e­ments from the ser­vice. He sought to as­sure the pub­lic that all com­plaints against of­fi­cers would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“Whether it’s drink­ing (and) dri­ving, whether it’s dis­obey­ing all rules of the road and is dri­ving, and if you see them tak­ing bribes . . . There is no room in our ser­vice for that . . . Lodge a for­mal com­plaint by writ­ing it down, and pre­sent­ing it to the (Po­lice) Com­plaints Unit. They will in­ves­ti­gate any of your com­plaints. Whether the com­plaints on the con­duct of the mem­ber (of the ser­vice) or the fact that the mem­ber hasn’t con­duct­ed them­selves in a man­ner that’s ap­pro­pri­ate,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs last­ed just two years in of­fice be­fore re­sign­ing.

In 2013, for­mer Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Williams promised to pros­e­cute and ex­pel cor­rupt of­fi­cers from the ser­vice. He was an­swer­ing ques­tions fol­low­ing a re­port that two po­lice of­fi­cers were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for leak­ing in­for­ma­tion to gang lead­ers.

“As an or­ga­ni­za­tion, we have to work hard at fix­ing the im­age of the Po­lice Ser­vice, to move it from a neg­a­tive im­age to a pos­i­tive im­age. We have to do clean­ing up, that is why we have to in­ves­ti­gate any com­plaint against po­lice of­fi­cers and if nec­es­sary, pros­e­cute these of­fi­cers.

“The ser­vice in­tends to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute cor­rupt of­fi­cers and to en­sure that ‘bad eggs’ are not re­cruit­ed. As an or­ga­ni­za­tion, once you have bad eggs, it pains you be­cause you re­al­ly want an or­ga­ni­za­tion which meets the pub­lic per­cep­tion of a po­lice of­fi­cer, that is, a po­lice of­fi­cer who is hon­est, has the high­est lev­el of in­tegri­ty and is a true pro­fes­sion­al,” Williams said.

In 2020, William’s suc­ces­sor, Gary Grif­fith, al­so iden­ti­fied cor­rup­tion in the ser­vice as an is­sue that need­ed to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed.

“Po­lice of­fi­cers are sup­posed to be more dis­ci­plined and have less rights than the av­er­age cit­i­zen as the po­lice of­fi­cers is ex­pect­ed to be at a high­er stan­dard, un­for­tu­nate­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go I see it is just the op­po­site.

“In the po­lice ser­vice, if some­one is trans­ferred, they want to rush to court, to protest and fight for their rights. At times we trans­fer peo­ple on the ba­sis of that in­di­vid­ual’s train­ing, oth­er times it’s based on in­tel­li­gence where we have seen or dis­cov­ered po­lice have as­sist­ed crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

He said the TTPS would be draft­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to Par­lia­ment for laws aimed at tack­ling er­rant of­fi­cers. Grif­fith’s con­tract was CoP was not re­newed, and he was re­placed by for­mer act­ing com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob who was suc­ceed­ed by cur­rent com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher.

(BOX)

By the num­bers

Ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty’s 2022 an­nu­al re­port, pub­lished ear­li­er this year, there was a 22 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of com­plaints against of­fi­cers from the 2021 pe­ri­od com­pared to 2022.

From Oc­to­ber 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2022, there was an av­er­age of 47 re­ports made against of­fi­cers every month. The youngest al­leged vic­tim was eight-years-old, while the old­est al­leged vic­tim was 93 years old.

Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, there were 64 ac­cu­sa­tions against of­fi­cers for mur­der, 159 for as­sault, 114 for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, 333 for dis­cred­itable con­duct, 302 for ne­glect of du­ty, 28 for ma­li­cious dam­age, 24 for lar­ce­ny, 17 for firearm of­fences, 11 for sex­u­al of­fences, 11 for fraud and cor­rup­tion, and 93 for oth­er of­fences.

How­ev­er, 410 of the com­plaints were closed by the PCA with no fur­ther ac­tion, 45 were for­ward­ed to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, 26 were for­ward­ed to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and four were sent to the CoP and the DPP.