DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has sharply crit­i­cised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s ap­proach to polic­ing.

He made the com­ment while ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at the par­ty’s 69th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day evening.

As he ad­dressed sup­port­ers, Row­ley re­flect­ed on his up­bring­ing, tak­ing is­sue with how some par­ents are cur­rent­ly rais­ing their chil­dren. He re­called that his fa­ther raised six boys, nev­er need­ing po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

“He al­ways took the po­si­tion that his role was to ed­u­cate us to re­spect the law, to re­spect our­selves, re­spect oth­er peo­ple and in fact be car­ing and pro­duc­tive. That’s what you teach chil­dren to do. We are fail­ing in many parts of that,” he said, as he sought to en­cour­age par­ents to do bet­ter.

He fur­ther ex­plained that dur­ing his child­hood, he ob­served of­fi­cers go­ing above and be­yond the call of du­ty, un­like to­day.

“And of course, those who are giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the oner­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to treat with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty on their part is a chal­lenge for us too,” he said.

To il­lus­trate his point, Row­ley shared a sto­ry of a man who owed his grand­fa­ther mon­ey but failed to re­pay it. Af­ter the mat­ter went to court, the po­lice wait­ed out­side the man’s home to serve a war­rant, as the sus­pect of­ten hid from them. Row­ley re­count­ed how po­lice of­fi­cers walked the man from Mo­ri­ah to the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion at 4 am af­ter de­tain­ing him.

“That’s how po­lice used to work. They ent telling you they don’t have no re­sources,” Row­ley re­marked.

He added: “Mo­ri­ah to Ma­son Hall, that’s two miles. Ma­son Hall to Scar­bor­ough, four miles. That’s po­lice work. Ap­pre­hend­ing a man on a war­rant for mon­ey not paid to some­one he owed.”

This is not the first time Row­ley has crit­i­cised the TTPS, led by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

On Jan­u­ary 13, Row­ley told Par­lia­ment that some po­lice of­fi­cers were pre­tend­ing to close sta­tions to hide from crim­i­nals. His com­ments sparked crit­i­cism from the Po­lice Ser­vice Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, Gideon Dick­son, for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Prof. Ramesh De­osaran, and for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams.

While Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Hare­wood-Christo­pher did not di­rect­ly re­buke Row­ley, she re­spond­ed by as­sur­ing the pub­lic that all po­lice sta­tions re­main open. How­ev­er, Row­ley, in a Jan­u­ary 15 re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, re­it­er­at­ed that he had not lied nor did he in­tend to of­fend the po­lice.

“The overblown crit­i­cisms are not fo­cused on what I ac­tu­al­ly said. One, it was a state­ment of fact in re­la­tion to a few in­stances of polic­ing. Are they deny­ing that?” Row­ley said in a What­sApp mes­sage.

“Two, I was not so much crit­i­ciz­ing po­lice of­fi­cers as I was point­ing out the ac­cel­er­at­ed brazen­ness of the crim­i­nals who are not pre­pared to re­spect the po­lice, or even the po­lice at the sta­tions. What is there to crit­i­cise?”

Row­ley al­so lament­ed that his crit­ics failed to ac­knowl­edge his con­sis­tent sup­port for law en­force­ment.

The PM al­so took a mo­ment to ad­dress T&T’s gang prob­lem, stat­ing that crim­i­nals are “hell-bent on mak­ing our lives a liv­ing hell.”

He not­ed that while gangs of the past fought with ra­zors, ice picks, and phys­i­cal strength, to­day’s gangs are armed with as­sault weapons de­signed for ef­fi­cient killing. Row­ley ex­plained that the evo­lu­tion of these weapons, from home­made guns to the so­phis­ti­cat­ed as­sault ri­fles used to­day, has great­ly in­creased the ca­pac­i­ty for vi­o­lence.

“The abil­i­ty to kill has im­proved so much, and the neg­a­tive im­pact of gangs has mul­ti­plied,” Row­ley said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on Row­ley’s com­ments about the polic­ing ef­forts of to­day, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said while Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, was ap­pro­pri­ate­ly po­si­tioned to make such a com­ment, he felt the is­sue arose from poor lead­er­ship and an un­will­ing­ness to use mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to as­sist in crime fight­ing.

“What the Prime Min­is­ter is talk­ing about, it has noth­ing to do with lack of re­sources, it has to do with lack of lead­er­ship, poor man­age­ment present­ly and the in­abil­i­ty to utilise tech­nol­o­gy that was be­ing used three years ago and they have shut it down,” he said.

“We’ve gone back to the out­dat­ed 20th-cen­tu­ry type of polic­ing in­stead of util­is­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, units and sys­tems we had three years ago, so the Prime Min­is­ter know’s what he is speak­ing about be­cause three years ago, we had that im­me­di­ate re­sponse.”

Re­fer­ring to the re­sponse times of po­lice dur­ing his tenure be­tween 2018 to 2021, Grif­fith claimed there was a much short­er wait time as po­lice of­fi­cers were ef­fec­tive­ly guid­ed and di­rect­ed to ar­eas us­ing re­al-time up­dates from com­mand cen­tres.

He added that such prac­tices were crit­i­cal for law en­force­ment, not­ing that while de­tec­tion rates for crimes were im­por­tant bench­marks for suc­cess, crime sup­pres­sion strate­gies were equal­ly cru­cial.

“The de­tec­tion rate of T&T is prob­a­bly on par with Chica­go and oth­er places with gang ac­tiv­i­ty, so the fo­cus of what should be done is to pro­vide the de­ter­rent and to pro­vide what is pre­dic­tive polic­ing to pre­vent the crime from tak­ing place and if it takes place, en­sure you have an im­me­di­ate re­sponse,” he said.