Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial & Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA), ASP Gideon Dick­son, has de­scribed the Op­po­si­tion’s re­jec­tion of a bill to al­low per­sons to be ap­point­ed as act­ing com­mis­sion­ers with­out Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval as a “trav­es­ty”.

The bill sought to al­low the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to ap­point act­ing com­mis­sion­ers with­out the ap­proval of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

How­ev­er, dur­ing a de­bate in the Low­er House on Fri­day, in de­fend­ing the UNC’s po­si­tion, MP Roodal Mooni­lal said the orig­i­nal arrange­ment al­lowed trans­paren­cy in the ap­point­ment of act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­ers, adding that al­low­ing dis­course over can­di­dates was nec­es­sary.

“We have no prob­lem com­ing here, re­ceiv­ing the names and hav­ing a short de­bate on the names. Mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment them­selves are some­times not aware of what is go­ing on. I am won­der­ing if the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion knew of this amend­ment, and we are re­li­ably in­formed the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is in the dark,” Mooni­lal said.

The bill, which re­quired a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty to be passed, was re­ject­ed by the Op­po­si­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on its fail­ure yes­ter­day, Dick­son firm­ly op­posed the Op­po­si­tion’s rea­son­ing and in­sist­ed that the ap­point­ment of an act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er should hap­pen away from Par­lia­ment.

He ar­gued that while the PolSC has been en­trust­ed to ap­point a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, they should al­so be en­trust­ed to ap­point some­one on a tem­po­rary ba­sis.

“We can­not say the PolSC is an in­de­pen­dent body that deals with the se­lec­tion of a com­mis­sion­er and then when it’s time to ap­point, they are not af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­point the per­son who would have gone through the process to be ap­point­ed,” Dick­son said.

He in­sist­ed that such de­ci­sions had the po­ten­tial to un­der­mine the au­thor­i­ty of the PolSC and af­fect the morale of ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cers who were pro­mot­ed on the ba­sis of their mer­it.

“If the PolSC, as in­de­pen­dent as they are, say­ing it’s in­de­pen­dent to get the best per­son and when they sub­mit the best per­son, it ap­pears if the Par­lia­ment don’t like you or if the Par­lia­ment has some is­sue with you, then you can be re­ject­ed. That is wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and is play­ing pol­i­tics with the TTPS.”

Dick­son said act­ing ap­point­ments for the lead­er­ship of oth­er branch­es of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices (De­fence Force, Fire Ser­vice, Pris­ons Ser­vice) were not brought to Par­lia­ment for de­bate and said he saw no rea­son for it to be done with the TTPS.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, re­tired ASP Sheri­don Hill de­scribed the bill’s re­jec­tion as “ridicu­lous”.

Hill, who served in the Spe­cial Branch, the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) and the Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Unit, said he did not see any le­git­i­mate rea­son for its re­jec­tion.

Hill said hav­ing a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, whether in an act­ing or per­ma­nent ca­pac­i­ty, was crit­i­cal for the ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tion­ing of the TTPS.

He not­ed that while some of­fi­cers may be able to nav­i­gate the bu­reau­cra­cy of the TTPS on cer­tain ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues, there were oth­er mat­ters that on­ly a com­mis­sion­er could ap­prove or act on.

“All the func­tions of the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice are sus­pend­ed be­cause of this piece of leg­isla­tive in­ter­ven­tion that makes it so cum­ber­some. Do you know how many things will be on hold, be­cause you don’t have some­one act­ing?” Hill said.

“Things like the trans­fers of of­fi­cers, ini­ti­at­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against of­fi­cers, giv­ing au­tho­ri­sa­tion for funds.

“There are some func­tions a deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice can per­form based on de­part­men­tal or­ders and so on, but then you have oth­er func­tions the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice alone can per­form.”

As an ex­am­ple, Hill said on­ly the com­mis­sion­er could grant ap­proval for First Di­vi­sion Of­fi­cers (of­fi­cers in the rank of As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice and above) to pro­ceed on leave.