It's hard to imag­ine what kind of re­ac­tion Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed was hop­ing for when he put the blunt­ly in­flam­ma­to­ry state­ment be­fore the Mu­nic­i­pal and Ser­vice Com­mis­sions Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) that the racial pro­file of the Po­lice Ser­vice's lead­er­ship was im­bal­anced.Mo­hammed un­set­tled the JSC mem­ber­ship as well as mem­bers of his own team of pre­sen­ters when he of­fered the sug­ges­tion on the floor.Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis put it suc­cinct­ly when she ad­mit­ted that she was un­com­fort­able with the use of eth­nic clas­si­fi­ca­tions in a dis­cus­sion about job de­scrip­tions.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sham­fa Cud­joe won­dered whether Mo­hammed was ad­vo­cat­ing some type of af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion ef­fort in the Po­lice Ser­vice.So is Nizam Mo­hammed a seer of in­sight on this mat­ter, a bold cham­pi­on of equal rights in the po­lice ser­vice for all na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go or a man who has sim­ply point­ed out the ob­vi­ous?

It is no se­cret to any­one who has viewed Po­lice Ser­vice press con­fer­ences that an over­whelm­ing num­ber of cit­i­zens of African de­scent com­prise the lead­er­ship of the law en­force­ment body. In of­fer­ing an enu­mer­a­tion of that com­mon­ly un­der­stood fact, the PSC Chair­man has made a use­ful point about racial im­bal­ance in Trinidad and To­ba­go's po­lice ser­vice.That there are no East In­di­ans in the po­lice lead­er­ship un­til the fourth rank of man­age­ment, that of Su­per­in­ten­dent, where every third of­fi­cer is iden­ti­fi­ably, one pre­sumes, of East In­di­an de­scent, is sure­ly some­thing that should be of some con­cern to po­lice man­age­ment.

Still, the PSC Chair­man failed to en­gage a deep­er dis­cus­sion that might have sought to make it clear whether that im­bal­ance runs through­out the Po­lice Ser­vice.The ev­i­dence of one's eyes might have made it com­mon knowl­edge that the se­nior ranks of po­lice lead­er­ship, ex­cept for two re­cent Cana­di­an im­ports, is en­tire­ly of African de­scent, there is no clear or com­mon un­der­stand­ing or sta­tis­ti­cal eval­u­a­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of East In­di­an of­fi­cers in the po­lice ser­vice at large.

To sug­gest that law en­force­ment might be ham­pered at the lev­el of street polic­ing by a gen­er­al lack of con­fi­dence in the breadth of rep­re­sen­ta­tion by East In­di­ans in the po­lice ser­vice is sim­ply to en­gage in dan­ger­ous­ly provoca­tive spec­u­la­tion. Not both­er­ing to frame the state­ment in the con­text of a need for a prop­er so­cial study of racial rep­re­sen­ta­tion and it's im­pact if it holds true is sim­ply reck­less. A con­ver­sa­tion at the lev­el of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee should not pro­ceed on the ba­sis of thoughts and feel­ings that may well have arisen from com­plaints and con­cerns of­fered to the PSC chair­man by In­do-Trinida­di­an of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing, ap­par­ent­ly, the head of the Po­lice Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, about their pro­mo­tion prospects in the ser­vice.

Mat­ters of race and pro­fil­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go are im­por­tant enough that they de­serve se­ri­ous eval­u­a­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion be­fore they are ar­tic­u­lat­ed in as pub­lic a fo­rum as a JSC meet­ing and when such a mat­ter is deemed im­por­tant enough for pub­lic con­sid­er­a­tion, it should pro­ceed with clear in­ves­tiga­tive and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive mea­sures as part of the con­text of the dis­cus­sion.Every­one present at Fri­day's JSC meet­ing with the PSC chair­man might have been hap­pi­er if he had come with an area of con­cern and some strate­gies that the mem­bers present could agree were wor­thy of putting in­to mo­tion.

It will have es­caped no one's no­tice ei­ther that there are al­so few Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens of Eu­ro­pean, Amer­i­can or Asian de­scent at work in the po­lice ser­vice at any lev­el and that may point to greater de­fi­cien­cies in the Po­lice Ser­vice as an em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty that are al­so worth re­view­ing.It shouldn't be nec­es­sary to point out the im­por­tance of com­mon sense pro­ce­dure and so­lu­tions-based ap­proach­es in as sen­si­tive a mat­ter as race to an ex­pe­ri­enced for­mer politi­cian like Nizam Mo­hammed, so the na­tion should ex­pect more ag­gres­sive fo­cus on ac­tion­able sug­ges­tions in fu­ture re­ports from the Po­lice Ser­vice Chair­man.