Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Any list of trou­bles in our lo­cal Po­lice Ser­vice would in­clude ex­ces­sive use of force, blurred lines be­tween po­lice and mil­i­tary, an in­tense fo­cus on polic­ing the poor, fail­ure to po­lice the wealthy and white-col­lar crime in gen­er­al, a lack of po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty, street jus­tice, reg­u­lar fa­tal­i­ties in in­ter­ac­tions be­tween po­lice and the pub­lic, low con­vic­tion rates, and in­ter­nal cor­rup­tion.

Ap­plied an­thro­pol­o­gists who his­tor­i­cal­ly have worked to im­prove jus­tice sys­tems around the world, are quick to point out the racist log­ic and prej­u­dice against the poor em­bed­ded in many po­lice cul­tures. For ex­am­ple, one of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith's favourite bor­rowed the­o­ries for re­duc­ing crime in T&T–the "Bro­ken Win­dows" polic­ing of doc­u­ment­ed racist Rudy Giu­liani–is an al­ready dis­cred­it­ed idea un­der­stood aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in the US as a war on the poor and peo­ple of colour.

In­stead of this con­tin­ued im­por­ta­tion of bro­ken "so­lu­tions," which ig­nore a so­ci­ety's own struc­tur­al in­equal­i­ties, lo­cal his­to­ry and cul­ture, and the con­text of how in­di­vid­u­als en­ter and live in pover­ty, to sole­ly go af­ter the poor for be­ing poor, and nev­er white-col­lar crim­i­nals, what might bring more pro­gres­sive polic­ing and law en­force­ment to T&T?

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Jen­nie Simp­son, an an­thro­pol­o­gist of polic­ing in North Amer­i­ca, one ques­tion to ask is do po­lice agen­cies need an­thro­pol­o­gists? While ac­knowl­edg­ing "how hard im­ple­men­ta­tion–even of the best vi­sion–can be, es­pe­cial­ly with­in a hi­er­ar­chi­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion," and that in gen­er­al be­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer is a thank­less job, Simp­son lists three el­e­ments an­thro­pol­o­gy brings to polic­ing in com­par­i­son to oth­er dis­ci­plines.

1. An­thro­pol­o­gists help po­lice lead­ers bet­ter un­der­stand their de­part­ments and per­son­nel and iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties to of­fer bet­ter po­lice ser­vices to com­mu­ni­ties.

2. An­thro­pol­o­gists help po­lice lead­ers trans­late polic­ing to the pub­lic and bridge eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of crime-pre­ven­tion poli­cies.

3. By un­der­stand­ing po­lice cul­ture, po­lice lead­ers cre­ate pol­i­cy and prac­tices that high­light the spir­it of ser­vice in polic­ing and em­pha­sise le­git­i­ma­cy, trans­paren­cy and pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Few will have missed the sto­ry of ACP Reyes and his jour­ney to his new post in To­ba­go. Wit­ness ac­counts say the of­fi­cer was rude, abu­sive, and ig­nored the di­rec­tions of those in charge. His jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his "above-the-law" be­hav­iour was to cite all pas­sen­gers and staff on the plane as con­spir­ing in a white su­prema­cist plot against him.

Reg­u­lar read­ers of this col­umn know white su­prema­cy is a prob­lem in both our lo­cal so­ci­ety and more glob­al­ly. As any so­ci­ol­o­gist will tell you, the world is struc­tural­ly racist and cap­i­tal­ism is his­tor­i­cal­ly dri­ven by the log­ic of white su­prema­cy. And yes, white su­prema­cy can be sub­tle and un­ob­tru­sive too. How­ev­er, from all the de­tails avail­able, to de­scribe the ACP Reyes in­ci­dent as dri­ven by the log­ic of white su­prema­cy would be sil­ly.

That said, for any se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer to cite the term and lan­guage, "white su­prema­cy," sug­gests a cul­tur­al rich point in line with Simp­son's re­search that po­lice lead­ers and per­son­nel need to bet­ter un­der­stand their de­part­ments' cul­ture.

For ex­am­ple, how does our po­lice force both as an in­sti­tu­tion and as in­di­vid­ual po­lice per­son­nel deal with lo­cal race and class is­sues? Are peo­ple giv­en race, eth­nic­i­ty and gen­der train­ing? Giv­en in T&T racial is­sues are not sim­ply black vs white or sole­ly dri­ven by white su­prema­cy, how do our po­lice treat and un­der­stand the com­plex­i­ty of our dif­fer­ences?

An­oth­er el­e­ment is how do our po­lice forces view the poor and how do they view the rich? What are the im­pli­ca­tions of such views for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens? Who are the po­lice most bi­ased against? How are al­ter­na­tive lifestyles treat­ed?

Simp­son de­fines po­lice cul­ture as, "the val­ues, norms, per­spec­tives and craft rules which in­form po­lice con­duct," and "the in­for­mal oc­cu­pa­tion­al norms and val­ues op­er­at­ing un­der the ap­par­ent­ly rigid hi­er­ar­chi­cal struc­ture of po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tions." She notes al­so this col­lec­tive cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly pos­sess­es "a cyn­i­cism and sus­pi­cion to­wards cer­tain peo­ple, places and events," which will re­mind any crim­i­nol­o­gist the orig­i­nal po­lice forces of the 19th cen­tu­ry were in­vent­ed by elites as a re­sponse to crowds, not crime.

In this sense, the col­lec­tive cul­ture of polic­ing in T&T can be seen as Simp­son sug­gests–an im­ped­i­ment to change with­in a po­lice force re­luc­tant to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment "in­no­v­a­tive and ev­i­dence-in­formed prac­tices, as well as to or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change and the cul­ti­va­tion of new meth­ods for achiev­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty, le­git­i­ma­cy and pub­lic trust."

Such re­sis­tance in­cludes be­ing cyn­i­cal to change and in­di­vid­ual prej­u­dices with­in the po­lice force. Yet our po­lice force–and our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers too–do not have the in­ter­nal abil­i­ty to treat such sub­tleties. An­thro­pol­o­gists are ex­perts in cul­ture. When it comes to polic­ing, an­thro­pol­o­gists bring an un­der­stand­ing of the col­lec­tive cul­ture and sub-cul­tures of those in­volved in po­lice work.

By let­ting an­thro­pol­o­gists in­to their or­gan­i­sa­tions po­lice lead­ers would bet­ter un­der­stand the cul­tur­al dy­nam­ics ob­struct­ing in­no­va­tion. They would learn the view­points and ex­pe­ri­ences of rank and file staff, and be­come more at­tuned to the re­al­i­ties of their of­fi­cers in ways that could im­prove their crit­i­cal buy-in and en­gen­der cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion of the po­lice as an in­sti­tu­tion it­self.