Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

An­gli­can priest Rev­erend Er­ic Thomp­son’s call to re­cruit Venezue­lan women in­to the po­lice ser­vice is com­ing un­der heavy fire from for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber Mar­tin George.

Speak­ing at the St Thomas An­gli­can Church, Ch­agua­nas, on Thurs­day dur­ing an in­ter­faith ser­vice for women in the TTPS, Thomp­son sug­gest­ed re­cruit­ing Venezue­lan women in­to TTPS to help deal with the grow­ing mi­grant pop­u­la­tion in T&T.

“Strik­ing a bal­ance may mean the re­cruit­ment from Venezuela in­to the po­lice ser­vice. Be­fore we know it, we will have a mi­grant pop­u­la­tion from Venezuela that will be hard to in­fil­trate.

“Maybe it is time to re­view our laws, to re­view the Po­lice Ser­vice Act to in­clude in our re­cruit­ing strate­gies, women of Span­ish speak­ing to bridge the cul­tur­al gap and to give you a fight­ing chance in this dark world that will be­come dark­er in the years to come,” Thomp­son told the gath­er­ing.

Com­ment­ing on this yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said the idea is far-fetched, adding that be­fore this is con­sid­ered, qual­i­fied cit­i­zens must first be in­clud­ed in the po­lice ser­vice.

“This is as log­i­cal as stat­ing that the US should start hir­ing Mex­i­cans to be part of their law en­force­ment as po­lice of­fi­cers be­cause many Mex­i­cans get through the bor­der,” Grif­fith said.

He added that dur­ing his term as com­mis­sion­er from 2018 to 2021, he was bom­bard­ed with thou­sands of ap­pli­ca­tions from qual­i­fied cit­i­zens want­i­ng to join the TTPS, which he said is one of the most no­ble of pro­fes­sions.

“Be­cause we have an in­flux of per­sons who we may deem as il­le­gal im­mi­grants, they’re say­ing let’s hire peo­ple from that same coun­try to deal with the prob­lem. That is not how that is dealt with,” Grif­fith said.

George rub­bished the idea, not­ing it seemed to im­ply that every of­fi­cer from con­sta­ble to com­mis­sion­er should now have their own deputy.

“If one will sim­ply look at the record, it is clear that they (Venezue­lan women) have al­ready in­fil­trat­ed the TTPS by the droves for years now, by the will­ing ac­com­pa­ni­ment of male po­lice of­fi­cers. They have al­ready in­fil­trat­ed their homes, their pri­vate res­i­dences, in their pri­vate deal­ings, in ho­tel rooms all over. It’s re­al­ly an ab­sur­di­ty to make any such calls now, they are well in­te­grat­ed in the po­lice ser­vice, of course for pri­vate rea­sons and not for any pub­lic pur­pose.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land said the mat­ter would need Gov­ern­ment sup­port if it were to be­come a re­al­i­ty.

How­ev­er, he said hav­ing had lit­tle in­for­ma­tion on the state­ment made by Thomp­son, he was not will­ing to com­ment fur­ther.

“That is not a one-per­son de­ci­sion, that must be a gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and un­til such time that it is dis­cussed, I pre­fer not to com­ment any fur­ther.”

But Venezue­lan ac­tivist An­dreina Briceno Ven­tu­ra-Brown says the sug­ges­tion is not nov­el, as there are suc­cess­ful prac­tices in the USA and oth­er coun­tries where le­gal im­mi­grants join lo­cal po­lice ser­vices. She said prop­er prepa­ra­tion is key to ad­dress­ing new chal­lenges while safe­guard­ing the na­tion.

“It’s a com­pelling idea to con­sid­er re­cruit­ing Venezue­lan women in­to the po­lice force to help ad­dress crime, as this could sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove the re­port­ing process for abuse and oth­er crimes with­in the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, en­sur­ing their voic­es are heard and their needs ef­fec­tive­ly met.

“How­ev­er, it’s im­por­tant to recog­nise that such ini­tia­tives should not be lim­it­ed to just one pop­u­la­tion,” Briceno Ven­tu­ra-Brown.

Ven­tu­ra-Brown said while bridg­ing cul­tur­al and lan­guage bar­ri­ers in the coun­try, the TTPS must al­so un­der­go com­pre­hen­sive train­ing in lo­cal laws and best prac­tices to ad­min­is­ter jus­tice fair­ly and con­sis­tent­ly.