Crime fight­ing is se­ri­ous­ly ham­pered if there is pub­lic mis­trust of po­lice of­fi­cers. The TTPS, which has been strug­gling for years with an abysmal­ly low crime de­tec­tion rate, needs co-op­er­a­tion from cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly in hot spot ar­eas, to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about crime.

Al­though some good work has been done through the po­lice youth clubs and oth­er out­reach­es, these are not suf­fi­cient to counter neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions from bad polic­ing and the un­for­tu­nate wrong­do­ing of rogue of­fi­cers.

So, while Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cobs, who is now on va­ca­tion, is al­ways keen to claim that progress is be­ing made in the fight against crime, a re­cent in­ci­dent in Bel­mont sig­nif­i­cant­ly sets back what­ev­er ef­forts have been made to boost pub­lic con­fi­dence in the TTPS.

In a video of the in­ci­dent which sur­faced on so­cial me­dia, of­fi­cers are seen us­ing ex­ces­sive­ly ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour and force while deal­ing with a mem­ber of the pub­lic. The sit­u­a­tion was ag­gra­vat­ed by the fact that the man ac­tu­al­ly had a child in his arms for a por­tion of the in­ter­ac­tion, as he protest­ed al­leged be­hav­iour by the of­fi­cers to­wards an­oth­er rel­a­tive, be­fore the of­fi­cers took the child away from him to take him in­to cus­tody, for what we sub­se­quent­ly learned were mi­nor charges, among them ob­scene lan­guage.

It is clear that some of the of­fi­cers un­der Mr Ja­cob’s com­mand don’t ap­pre­ci­ate the im­por­tance of de­vel­op­ing good re­la­tions with the com­mu­ni­ty and make lit­tle ef­fort to un­der­stand pub­lic con­cerns, es­pe­cial­ly those re­lat­ing to crime.

State-of-the-art equip­ment and law en­force­ment ini­tia­tives will be of lit­tle ef­fect if pub­lic trust in the TTPS con­tin­ues to be erod­ed to the point where cit­i­zens are un­will­ing to re­port crimes, pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to in­ves­ti­ga­tors and serve as wit­ness­es in court cas­es.

As it now stands, it is un­like­ly that any amount of dam­age con­trol will pre­vent some se­ri­ous fall­out from this Bel­mont ar­rest in­ci­dent. Al­ready, there are cries of in­jus­tice and claims of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and very valid con­cerns about the wel­fare of the tod­dler caught in the mid­dle.

That all this took place against a back­drop of the high­est mur­der rate in T&T’s his­to­ry, far sur­pass­ing the 550 record­ed in 2008, in­flicts some se­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age on an in­sti­tu­tion that is not cur­rent­ly liv­ing up to its mot­to to “pro­tect and serve with pride.”

Suc­cess in fight­ing crimes and build­ing a healthy and peace­ful en­vi­ron­ment should be top of the agen­da of the TTPS. That re­quires strong re­la­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties they serve across this coun­try.

As firm as po­lice of­fi­cers need to be in main­tain­ing law and or­der, they al­so need to be prop­er­ly trained to man­age con­flict and de-es­ca­late sit­u­a­tions to pro­tect in­no­cent by­standers, in­clud­ing chil­dren.

Need­less to say, the heavy-hand­ed­ness dis­played in the video could have been avoid­ed.