Last week the Prime Min­is­ter led a del­e­ga­tion to the US for en­er­gy, crime and se­cu­ri­ty talks. At the me­dia con­fer­ence on his re­turn, he con­firmed that sev­er­al meet­ings were held with mul­ti­ple US agen­cies to so­lic­it help in ad­dress­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. Mean­while, in T&T, the Op­po­si­tion leader led meet­ings with the pub­lic about crime.

On Wednes­day last, the CoP ap­peared be­fore the Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and con­firmed that the 2023 crime re­duc­tion tar­gets were un­met.

The CoP’s per­for­mance be­fore the JSC be­lied the list of aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ac­com­plish­ments the PM used to jus­ti­fy her se­lec­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, her re­spons­es did noth­ing to in­spire con­fi­dence in the pub­lic or with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice in her abil­i­ty to lead the ser­vice to an im­proved per­for­mance.

This amounts to dou­ble jeop­ardy. Quite apart from the fail­ure to meet “over-am­bi­tious” tar­gets, the ob­vi­ous un­der-prepa­ra­tion for the meet­ing with the JSC begs the ques­tion of whether the man­age­ment team un­der­stood the sig­nif­i­cance of the meet­ing.

It is tempt­ing to fo­cus on the per­for­mance of the CoP. That would be a mis­take. The prob­lems af­flict­ing the ser­vice pre­date Er­la and will still ex­ist when she demits of­fice. The mere ap­point­ment of a CoP can­not solve deep­er sys­temic is­sues.

Whilst a leader can be a change agent, chang­ing the per­for­mance of the Po­lice Ser­vice as an or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quires cas­cad­ing and re­in­forc­ing ob­jec­tives. That was not ev­i­dent from the di­a­logue.

Some of the re­spons­es spoke to wider is­sues of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty, sys­tems and dis­ci­pline struc­tures. The gen­er­al im­pres­sion is that man­age­ment is not up to the task and the dis­ci­pline with­in the ser­vice needs re­in­force­ment.

The law puts the Po­lice Ser­vice on the front line in the at­tack on crime. If we are not win­ning the war on crime, it is im­por­tant to iden­ti­fy the weak­ness­es at every lev­el which pre­vent the or­gan­i­sa­tion from be­ing fit for pur­pose.

Sug­gest­ing, as was done in the bud­get, that hir­ing more po­lice of­fi­cers will some­how ad­dress the crime prob­lem is the type of pal­lia­tive pub­lic re­la­tions de­vice that will in­crease ex­pen­di­ture on per­son­nel, but bring no last­ing change in per­for­mance.

Sim­i­lar­ly, spend­ing or propos­ing to spend an­oth­er $100 mil­lion on the De­fence Force to as­sist the po­lice is an­oth­er emp­ty ges­ture that is des­tined for fail­ure.

An at­tor­ney gen­er­al has claimed that the num­ber of peo­ple in­volved in gangs is small, num­ber­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 peo­ple. Yet a nu­mer­i­cal­ly su­pe­ri­or Po­lice Ser­vice ap­pears al­ways to be out­ma­noeu­vred, out­classed and out­fought.

Ei­ther gang num­bers are un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, the po­lice are poor­ly or­gan­ised, or the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter is right in sug­gest­ing that the crim­i­nals have pen­e­trat­ed all lev­els or some com­bi­na­tion of these pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Mere­ly ap­point­ing a CoP can­not ad­dress all is­sues.

Any CoP will need en­er­gy, willpow­er, a sup­port team in the field and the ad­min­is­tra­tive ar­eas and time. Oth­er se­cu­ri­ty arms, like Cus­toms and Ex­cise, must al­so be im­proved to halt the im­por­ta­tion of arms and ar­ma­ments.

The for­go­ing means that T&T can­not out­source its is­sues to for­eign agen­cies.

No plan will work un­less there are trust­ed peo­ple ca­pa­ble of ex­e­cut­ing a plan.

God helps those who help them­selves.