Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As the State of Emer­gency (SoE) con­tin­ues, var­i­ous stake­hold­ers have strong­ly re­ject­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s claims that po­lice of­fi­cers in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties are hid­ing in­side po­lice sta­tions to avoid con­fronting crim­i­nals.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion ASP Gideon Dick­son and for­mer chair of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) Prof Ramesh De­osaran crit­i­cised these state­ments as shock­ing, alarm­ing, and even reck­less, ar­gu­ing that such re­marks un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty and morale of law en­force­ment.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple was miss­ing from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). Yes­ter­day, Dick­son said Dr Row­ley’s re­marks were not “well-re­ceived” by po­lice of­fi­cers whom he said were push­ing them­selves to ful­fil their du­ties un­der sig­nif­i­cant strain.

Dick­son ques­tioned where Dr Row­ley re­ceived the in­for­ma­tion to make such re­marks and de­scribed the claims as “reck­less and care­less.” He cau­tioned that such re­marks could fur­ther de­mor­alise of­fi­cers, who were al­ready strug­gling with is­sues caused by lim­it­ed man­pow­er and re­sources.

“It was un­nec­es­sary to make such a state­ment, and it does noth­ing to im­pact the morale of the of­fi­cers who are on the ground and con­tin­ue to take the fight to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments. We are al­ready 1,400, near­ing 1,500 of­fi­cers short, and be­cause we are de­ployed and stretched thin, you would ap­pre­ci­ate that of­fi­cers al­so need to main­tain their health and safe­ty.”

Dick­son, re­flect­ing on his 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the TTPS, stat­ed that he has nev­er en­coun­tered in­stances where po­lice of­fi­cers de­lib­er­ate­ly hid from crim­i­nals. He urged Dr Row­ley to use his po­si­tion to en­sure that the po­lice are pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary re­sources to per­form their du­ties ef­fec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, Dick­son clar­i­fied that it is stan­dard prac­tice for of­fi­cers to turn off the lights in the charge rooms of po­lice sta­tions at night.

This mea­sure, he ex­plained, is tak­en to im­prove vis­i­bil­i­ty for of­fi­cers on du­ty by re­duc­ing glare and al­low­ing them to mon­i­tor the sur­round­ings more ef­fec­tive­ly. Ad­dress­ing the use of dark tint on sta­tion win­dows, he stat­ed that the tint en­hances of­fi­cers’ abil­i­ty to see the streets out­side clear­ly.

He em­pha­sised that these mea­sures are not in­tend­ed to hide from crim­i­nals or in­con­ve­nience the pub­lic.

A po­lice of­fi­cer from the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion ex­pressed dis­ap­proval of Dr Row­ley’s re­marks, de­scrib­ing them as an em­bar­rass­ment to po­lice of­fi­cers. The of­fi­cer stat­ed that the com­ments un­fair­ly por­trayed of­fi­cers as “cow­ards”, de­spite the fact that most of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to re­port for du­ty and as­sist in crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions, even with­out for­mal in­struc­tions.

“There are peo­ple out here who haven’t had a prop­er day off in years, and yet this is what we have to deal with on the side of our lead­ers. This is just a di­rect dis­re­spect to us, and there isn’t any ba­sis to sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments what­so­ev­er.”

Prof De­osaran, mean­while, said it was not good enough for Dr Row­ley to make such se­ri­ous re­marks with­out elab­o­rat­ing on which po­lice sta­tions he was re­fer­ring to. He al­so called for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion to ver­i­fy these claims in­volv­ing all na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers.

De­osaran said while he had nev­er heard of any such in­ci­dents dur­ing his tenure with the PolSC, it was even more un­prece­dent­ed that such shock­ing claims be made in the Par­lia­ment and hoped it was not a tac­tic by the Prime Min­is­ter to muster sup­port for an ex­ten­sion of the SoE.

“If the Prime Min­is­ter is mere­ly us­ing this as an ex­am­ple as a mat­ter of jus­ti­fy­ing the State of Emer­gency, it’s very ir­re­spon­si­ble, but if it has been hap­pen­ing, it has of course reached the ears of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; it is the height of in­com­pe­tence, so when you look at this par­tic­u­lar state­ment, it is not on­ly fright­en­ing, it shows you a break­down in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty start­ing from the ground up, and some­thing has to be done.

“Com­ing from the Prime Min­is­ter, it has to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, and nat­u­ral­ly, the en­tire pop­u­la­tion should be very much afraid as to what’s hap­pen­ing by and with the po­lice sta­tions and of­fi­cers.”

De­osaran em­pha­sised that im­me­di­ate ac­tion was nec­es­sary and re­quired the di­rect in­volve­ment of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher. He point­ed out that, in ad­di­tion to the claims be­ing made, there were sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about the over­all ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the po­lice force.

Re­fer­ring to con­cerns ex­pressed by Dr Row­ley over the mon­ey and re­sources in­vest­ed in the po­lice ser­vice, De­osaran ques­tioned what tan­gi­ble re­sults were seen.

“The Prime Min­is­ter isn’t mak­ing a vis­i­ble, com­pre­hen­sive step to fix up the po­lice ser­vice, apart from pour­ing mon­ey and re­sources ... If the Prime Min­is­ter wants to know what will help, he has to start from the bot­tom up and do some re­struc­tur­ing, and it’s alarm­ing as well on his part that he hasn’t been act­ing on the in­for­ma­tion be­fore him.”

It’s dis­turb­ing–Seep­er­sad

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad de­scribed Dr Row­ley’s re­marks as “dis­turb­ing”, as it threat­ened to low­er of­fi­cers’ morale while giv­ing crim­i­nals un­want­ed en­cour­age­ment.

“I as­sume the Prime Min­is­ter would have good in­for­ma­tion; it cer­tain­ly would be trou­bling if that is what is hap­pen­ing. That is some­thing that would send a very neg­a­tive mes­sage to the pub­lic. It’s go­ing to em­bold­en crim­i­nals even more than be­fore, but it’s al­so po­ten­tial­ly go­ing to have a de­mor­al­is­ing ef­fect on the po­lice ser­vice as a whole.”

Seep­er­sad said if po­lice of­fi­cers were that hes­i­tant to con­front crim­i­nals and ful­fil their du­ties, cor­rec­tive mea­sures should be in­tro­duced im­me­di­ate­ly. He not­ed that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher should have di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her of­fi­cers to out­line her ex­pec­ta­tion of them clear­ly while al­so en­sur­ing they up­hold their du­ties. 

I to­tal­ly dis­agree with putting that in­for­ma­tion–Williams

For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams said while he can­not ver­i­fy the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims that of­fi­cers have hid from crim­i­nals in their sta­tions, there were some pieces of in­for­ma­tion that should not be made pub­lic.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Williams said the Prime Min­is­ter may be aware of these sit­u­a­tions giv­en his role as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. But re­gard­less of whether the claims were fac­tu­al or not, Williams dis­agreed with Dr Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to make such com­ments pub­licly, not­ing that some in­for­ma­tion was shared in con­fi­dence.

“Not every­thing that you have by way of in­for­ma­tion as the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil head you should put out in the pub­lic do­main, and it’s very sad to hear put out there in the pub­lic, by the Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try, a state­ment like that.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is some­one I have great re­spect for, but this is one time I to­tal­ly dis­agree with him putting that in­for­ma­tion out there, even if it is true.”

Grif­fith: Lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple miss­ing

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Grif­fith said Dr Row­ley’s claims high­light­ed the lack of lead­er­ship with­in the TTPS to as­sume con­trol and lead by ex­am­ple. Grif­fith not­ed that of­fi­cers were pre­pared to ful­fil their du­ties even un­der the most dan­ger­ous con­di­tions once they re­ceived the sup­port of their com­man­ders but lament­ed that this was not the case.

“If you had lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple, by se­nior of­fi­cers be­ing on the ground, be­ing at the fore­front, be­ing there to show the troops, ‘I would be pre­pared to take the first bul­let’.

“Those same po­lice of­fi­cers will be more than will­ing to stand firm and say, ‘Yes, I will fol­low my leader, be­cause he is pre­pared to take the first bul­let’. That is what is miss­ing: lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple.”