Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh

The first year of any Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is of­ten marked by good­will, high ex­pec­ta­tions and the ben­e­fit of the doubt. The sec­ond year is dif­fer­ent: the pub­lic be­gins to judge not promis­es, but re­sults.

Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro now en­ters that sec­ond year with both achieve­ments and chal­lenges be­hind him.

Two se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lysts have pub­licly praised re­duc­tions in vi­o­lent crime, in­creased in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions and mount­ing pres­sure on gangs and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works. Those ac­com­plish­ments de­serve recog­ni­tion.

Yet num­bers alone do not tell the full sto­ry. The pub­lic ul­ti­mate­ly judges polic­ing not on­ly by crime sta­tis­tics, but by whether cit­i­zens gen­uine­ly feel safer, whether com­mu­ni­ties trust the po­lice, and whether crim­i­nal net­works are be­ing per­ma­nent­ly dis­man­tled rather than tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed.

One of Gue­var­ro’s most en­cour­ag­ing re­cent state­ments is his as­ser­tion that he has nev­er vot­ed and will re­main apo­lit­i­cal while in of­fice. In any democ­ra­cy, cit­i­zens must guard against the weapon­i­sa­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

His­to­ry teach­es us why.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­pe­ri­enced pe­ri­ods when the re­la­tion­ship be­tween pol­i­tics and law en­force­ment raised le­git­i­mate con­cerns. For­mer Op­po­si­tion MPs Bas­deo Pan­day and Kelvin Ram­nath were ar­rest­ed in 1975 dur­ing a labour protest, on­ly to be lat­er ac­quit­ted of lead­ing an il­le­gal march.

Over the decades, there have al­so been con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing al­leged sur­veil­lance, in­clud­ing re­ports of state mon­i­tor­ing of se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials, as well as in­ci­dents in­volv­ing drugs and even a mis­sile be­ing dis­cov­ered in a politi­cian’s wa­ter tank.

These episodes un­der­score a sim­ple truth: pow­er must al­ways be sub­ject to ac­count­abil­i­ty. The in­de­pen­dence of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is not mere­ly a con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple; it is a safe­guard for democ­ra­cy it­self.

For that rea­son, Gue­var­ro’s com­mit­ment to po­lit­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty must be wel­comed—and de­fend­ed.

At the same time, his po­si­tion war­rants care­ful scruti­ny. He has ar­gued that while the Po­lice Ser­vice is in­de­pen­dent, it must align its op­er­a­tional pri­or­i­ties with the pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives of the gov­ern­ment of the day. There is log­ic in that view: gov­ern­ments are elect­ed to set na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing crime-re­duc­tion strate­gies. How­ev­er, align­ment with pol­i­cy must nev­er be­come po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty. The dis­tinc­tion is crit­i­cal.

The com­mis­sion­er would do well to re­mem­ber that cit­i­zens judge the Po­lice Ser­vice not by its re­la­tion­ship with politi­cians, but by its com­mit­ment to fair­ness, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and equal treat­ment un­der the law.

Gue­var­ro has al­so point­ed to plans to in­crease man­pow­er and pur­sue in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form—an ar­gu­ment that is dif­fi­cult to dis­pute. The TTPS has tak­en on ex­pand­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in cy­ber­crime, fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tions, child pro­tec­tion, an­ti-kid­nap­ping op­er­a­tions, in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, dig­i­tal foren­sics and oth­er spe­cialised ar­eas with­out a com­men­su­rate in­crease in per­son­nel.

The re­sult has been over­worked of­fi­cers, ris­ing over­time costs and op­er­a­tional strain. His abil­i­ty to mod­ernise re­cruit­ment and es­tab­lish spe­cial­ist ca­reer paths may ul­ti­mate­ly prove one of the most im­por­tant re­forms of his tenure.

His call for greater tol­er­ance and na­tion­al uni­ty should not be over­looked. In a so­ci­ety of­ten di­vid­ed by pol­i­tics, race, re­li­gion and class, his ap­peal for cit­i­zens to treat one an­oth­er with dig­ni­ty re­flects the val­ues en­shrined in the na­tion­al mot­to: “To­geth­er We As­pire, To­geth­er We Achieve.” His de­scrip­tion of him­self as a “true Trinida­di­an” of East In­di­an, African and Span­ish her­itage is a time­ly re­minder that na­tion­al uni­ty re­mains one of our great­est strengths.

Still, sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns re­main.

The pub­lic ex­pects not on­ly ar­rests, but con­vic­tions. Re­cent months have seen a num­ber of cas­es in which in­di­vid­u­als were charged on­ly to be re­leased by the courts. This rais­es an im­por­tant ques­tion: where is the break­down oc­cur­ring—at the in­ves­tiga­tive, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al or ev­i­den­tial stage? The na­tion re­quires an­swers. A mod­ern polic­ing strat­e­gy can­not sim­ply count ar­rests; it must al­so mea­sure suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions, the dis­rup­tion of crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es and the de­liv­ery of jus­tice to vic­tims.

Gue­var­ro’s in­tel­li­gence back­ground may prove to be one of his great­est as­sets. With the cur­rent State of Emer­gency, ex­pand­ed in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and re­ports iden­ti­fy­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 186 crim­i­nal gangs, an op­por­tu­ni­ty ex­ists to deal mean­ing­ful blows to or­gan­ised crime.

The na­tion should want him to suc­ceed—not be­cause of pol­i­tics or per­son­al­i­ties, but be­cause the safe­ty of every cit­i­zen de­pends on the ef­fec­tive­ness of the in­sti­tu­tion he leads. The first year was about es­tab­lish­ing di­rec­tion. The sec­ond year will be about prov­ing that progress can be sus­tained.

The eyes of the na­tion re­main fixed on Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro. The true mea­sure of his lead­er­ship will not lie in speech­es, press con­fer­ences or po­lit­i­cal praise, but in whether T&T be­comes safer, more se­cure and more con­fi­dent in the rule of law.