Strate­gic lead­er­ship, in­tegri­ty and the abil­i­ty to com­mand first and sec­ond-di­vi­sion po­lice of­fi­cers are some qual­i­ties the Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSWA) wants in the next Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP).

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) closed off ac­cept­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the role of CoP and Deputy CoP last Thurs­day, al­most a year af­ter for­mer Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s term ex­pired. Now, pres­i­dent of the PSWA In­sp Gideon Dick­son says his As­so­ci­a­tion is look­ing for­ward to a leader who can forge part­ner­ships with in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers to ad­dress the scourge of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dick­son said such part­ner­ships in­clude oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies like the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, De­fence Force and Prison Ser­vice. But on the soft­er side, the next CoP should be emo­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent to un­der­stand var­i­ous roles and func­tions of of­fi­cers. Dick­son said the next CoP’s fo­cus should not on­ly be crime-fight­ing but al­so on the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all, in­clud­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

“It ought not to be about any­thing that speaks to any­one’s in­di­vid­ual agen­da, apart from the agen­da to make Trinidad & To­ba­go a safer place and in the process, en­sure the in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal cus­tomers are sat­is­fied with the de­liv­ery of ser­vices,” Dick­son said.|

Not just part­ner­ships, Dick­son said any­one who sits in the CoP chair should be able to de­vel­op sus­tain­able re­la­tion­ships and should get the re­sources re­quired for the job. These re­la­tion­ships in­clude in­ter­nal cus­tomers like the PSWA and man­age­r­i­al and op­er­a­tional charges. Dick­son said the next CoP should not ap­proach the job with a “me as the Com­mis­sion­er against the rest” at­ti­tude. In­stead, the next CoP needs to use every­one in the ser­vice to ad­dress crime. To achieve this, that per­son on­ly needs to mo­ti­vate through poli­cies and pro­fes­sion­al treat­ment.

“It can­not be that the ba­sic items they (of­fi­cers) re­quire in terms of boots, stock­ings, uni­forms and equip­ment, and these things are placed sec­ond on the agen­da to any­thing else. Those things must be ad­dressed. Then, you al­so should be able to com­mu­ni­cate with stake­hold­ers, which will al­so im­pact the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the of­fi­cers who car­ry out their du­ty on a day-to-day ba­sis.”

While the PSWA re­spects the roles and func­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and agrees that the lead­er­ship should meet the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions out­lined, it be­lieves the cri­te­ria nar­row the pool of can­di­dates for the CoP and Deputy CoP.

In 2019, the Com­mis­sion is­sued a Le­gal No­tice amend­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion pre­req­ui­site for CoP and Deputy CoP to in­clude a Mas­ter’s De­gree.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate it is al­ways im­por­tant to have a high­er de­gree of ed­u­ca­tion so that you will be able to strate­gise, com­mu­ni­cate and run poli­cies that will bring the re­sults we seek. In the same breath, there is no lev­el of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion you can get that could equate to ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Dick­son ac­knowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment is a crit­i­cal stake­hold­er and that the next CoP should de­vel­op a close part­ner­ship. Last week, Grif­fith an­nounced that he reap­plied for the CoP post af­ter a poll among his fol­low­ers showed that 92 per cent stat­ed that the coun­try was in dire cri­sis, and they re­quired him to reap­ply. How­ev­er, there is a strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween Grif­fith and the gov­ern­ment, with pub­lic spats be­tween him­self and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pub­licly de­clar­ing his loss of con­fi­dence.

Could Grif­fith cul­ti­vate a prop­er work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the gov­ern­ment if se­lect­ed? Dick­son said the As­so­ci­a­tion did not want to pre­empt the Com­mis­sion’s process. He said the saga be­tween Grif­fith and the gov­ern­ment was avail­able for all to as­sess.

How­ev­er, as an in­de­pen­dent Po­lice Ser­vice, he said that at no point should there be a per­cep­tion or re­al­i­ty that gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tions are pre­vent­ing of­fi­cers from car­ry­ing out their roles. Dick­son said re­cent de­ci­sions by the gov­ern­ment clear­ly show that the Of­fice of the CoP was evolv­ing in­to “a mov­ing the cart to the con­ve­nience of every­one” sce­nario. He said a CoP tak­ing va­ca­tion has be­come so bu­reau­crat­ic as a re­place­ment must get par­lia­men­tary ap­proval to act. He said al­though prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents are the two high­est of­fice hold­ers in the coun­try, they can take leave any­time with­out their re­place­ment en­dorsed by Par­lia­ment.