Se­nior of­fi­cials of the Po­lice Ser­vice em­barked on an in­ten­sive three-day train­ing work­shop yes­ter­day on how to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter dur­ing a cri­sis and im­prove me­dia re­la­tions as they seek to en­hance the im­age of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by ASP Joanne Archie and pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer of the Po­lice Ser­vice, Sgt Wayne Mys­tar, dur­ing yes­ter­day's dai­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James. The work­shop is be­ing host­ed by the Pub­lic Af­fairs Unit, led by di­rec­tor Sharon Lee As­sang. The fa­cil­i­ta­tor is an Amer­i­can, Judy Pal, whose com­pa­ny 10-8 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fers a ser­vice "ex­clu­sive­ly for law en­force­ment and pub­lic safe­ty." The com­pa­ny's Web site states: "A strong back­ground in broad­cast jour­nal­ism, pub­lic af­fairs and law en­force­ment al­lows us to share a unique un­der­stand­ing of the crit­i­cal ob­jec­tives on both sides of the cam­era to en­sure mes­sag­ing is rel­e­vant and in the best in­ter­est of your de­part­ment, the com­mu­ni­ty you serve and your rep­u­ta­tion as the leader of your or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Pal is a for­mer pub­lic re­la­tions con­sul­tant, broad­cast jour­nal­ist and news an­chor. She al­so has served as a pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er and chief of staff with ma­jor law en­force­ment agen­cies in the US and Cana­da. She has ex­ten­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pe­ri­ence in deal­ing with sen­si­tive and im­age-threat­en­ing is­sues, such as crim­i­nal con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers, in­ter­na­tion­al scan­dal, frac­tured com­mu­ni­ty and me­dia re­la­tions, com­pli­cat­ed ma­jor crime in­ves­ti­ga­tions and per­cived acts of ter­ror­ism. Archie said the work­shop was in keep­ing with the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive "to make the Po­lice Ser­vice a more com­pe­tent, car­ing, pro­fes­sion­al and com­mit­ted or­gan­i­sa­tion." She said the train­ing would go a long way to pre­pare se­nior of­fi­cials on how to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate with the me­dia, as well as en­sure the time­ly de­liv­ery of ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion. Archie said suc­ces­sion plan­ning would be used to en­sure oth­er ju­nior-ranked of­fi­cers al­so were trained on how to com­mu­ni­cate with the me­dia, once that ini­tial work­shop was com­plet­ed. Lee As­sang re­fused to re­veal the cost, as well as the aim and ob­jec­tives of the work­shop, say­ing it was sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion. Mys­tar con­firmed he went to Lon­don last week on a train­ing course, ti­tled Cri­sis Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which sought to pre­pare Gov­ern­ment for its com­mu­ni­ca­tion role dur­ing times of cri­sis.