Clevon Raphael

?Q:Mr Philbert, I see the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has threat­ened you over....?

A: (In­ter­rupt­ing the ques­tion at his Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice on Fri­day morn­ing): No, Sir. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion didn't threat­en me. And per­haps you are re­fer­ring to the ar­ti­cle which ap­peared in the Guardian ear­li­er this week. Yes.

In­deed, I was con­cerned in the man­ner in which it took a cer­tain slant. I have since had com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the chair­man (Christo­pher Thomas). As a mat­ter of fact, I have to see him in a very short while (glanc­ing at his wrist watch) this morn­ing and my doc­tor. Hence, I am sor­ry this in­ter­view has to be of short du­ra­tion.

Are you say­ing he did not ex­press con­cern about your per­for­mance, or that of the per­son­nel un­der your charge?

No. He didn't say he did not say so, but the way the thing came over...and look, you your­self have just spo­ken about "threat­en." And I did have peo­ple call­ing me to ex­press the same sen­ti­ment...that you have just asked.

Be­ing the re­spon­si­ble news­pa­per that the Guardian is, I am sure that will be dealt with in the ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner in due course. How­ev­er, Mr Thomas gave you un­til the 15th of this month to come up with a plan on how you in­tend to re­duce the crime rate–a road map as it were...Have you com­plied?

All those things...and you see again, this is about the third oc­ca­sion that I have seen re­ports in the news­pa­per about what the chair­man has said to me, and they are nev­er ex­act­ly what was said to me by the chair­man.

What did he tell you?

In terms of what?

Sub­mit­ting a road map on how....

(In­ter­rupt­ing) It is not that we don't have a road map, and every one that I have been asked to sub­mit I have sub­mit­ted. They have got­ten their bi-an­nu­al re­port and we con­tin­ue to di­a­logue....

In your doc­u­ment of the 15th, did you point to any new di­rec­tion in your plans to curb the ac­tiv­i­ties of the law­less el­e­ments?

Clevon, I want to point out that the peo­ple al­ways asked what the new plan is. There has al­ways been a plan, and when I joined the ser­vice 43 years ago, there was a plan; what hap­pens is that you have to keep chang­ing that plan, be­cause you are be­ing fed by in­tel­li­gence and there is no new plan.

I com­mend your hands-on ap­proach by join­ing your men and women on the field, giv­ing them moral sup­port, but....

(In­ter­rupt­ing) That has al­ways been my way. Po­lice for me is on the streets. You need to men­tor; you need to su­per­vise; you need to man­age it out there, and you need to get in touch with the pub­lic and get in touch with what is go­ing on. There is a lot of pa­per work to do, but I would not like to miss the ac­tion out­side.

With all re­spects to you, Sir, your pres­ence out there has not con­tributed to the re­duc­tion of the hor­ren­dous homi­cide rate?

If you un­der­stand what are the caus­es of homi­cides, the mere pres­ence of the Com­mis­sion­er and his per­son­nel on the streets would not af­fect the homi­cide fig­ure. That has to do with gang ac­tiv­i­ty, and if you un­der­stand the gang cul­ture...how they op­er­ate, is like war­ring fac­tions. But strange­ly enough, we have con­tributed to a re­duc­tion in gang­land ac­tiv­i­ties.

The pro­posed in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion to out­law gangs has again raised this ques­tion. Who, or what, con­sti­tutes a gang?

Yes. Three or more per­sons with a com­mon and par­tic­u­lar agen­da, with crim­i­nal in­tent. The thing about gangs in Trinidad is that while we get the same re­sults, they are not like their coun­ter­parts abroad, with clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able names...

How do you iden­ti­fy our home­spun gangs?

By ju­ris­dic­tion: Dun­can Street, Up­per Nel­son, Low­er Nel­son and such.

A few years ago, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty gave the num­ber of the gangs op­er­at­ing in this coun­try and their mem­ber­ship. Why can't the po­lice just ar­rest these peo­ple?

(Lean­ing for­ward on his desk): First, per­haps you should ask how many of them have been held; how many of them are out on bail; how many have been con­vict­ed. That is what you need to know, I do not have those fig­ures at my fin­ger­tips, but you al­so need to un­der­stand our gang cul­ture to un­der­stand why they are still out­side.

Why are they still out­side?

For var­i­ous rea­sons, and as I said, gangs are war­ring fac­tions who do var­i­ous things, but they come to­geth­er to de­feat jus­tice.

An ex­am­ple of how this is man­i­fest­ed?

One of the things is that if one man is held for the mur­der of a mem­ber of an­oth­er gang, and an­oth­er man is held for killing a mem­ber of the oth­er gang, they come to­geth­er and say: "Let us dis­pose of this thing." So no­body goes to court.

Isn't that very in­dus­tri­ous in a per­verse kind of way of these peo­ple?

(Nod­ding dis­ap­proval) I don't see that as be­ing in­dus­tri­ous. And you have to look at and see what laws we have here to pre­vent that. The laws we have did not cater for that; the law has to be dy­nam­ic–it has to move. When you look at our laws, they are made for the law-bid­ing...

But what is so dif­fi­cult about ar­rest­ing one gang mem­ber for killing an­oth­er gang mem­ber?

You have to get the ev­i­dence, sir. You will get it from one, and the rea­sons why they would give it is to hold the oth­er one to ran­som. They are not com­ing to you, be­cause they want to see that jus­tice is served.

So you get them in the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme and when the mat­ter comes up they for­get. They dis­ap­pear.

What can the po­lice do to counter that strat­e­gy?

You have to go to the root of it, and we still have to look at what is en­cour­ag­ing young men to get in­to gangs.

From your van­tage point, Mr Com­mis­sion­er, what is the most salient fac­tor in this re­gard?

We have to look at our in­sti­tu­tions such as the fam­i­ly, the schools. I could tell you where my daugh­ter is, but in so many oth­er in­stances where fam­i­lies are bro­ken up, some par­ents do not re­al­ly know where their chil­dren are.

I am not try­ing to triv­i­alise that point, but sin­gle-par­ent homes have been with us from ever since. What went wrong, Mr Com­mis­sion­er?

You are right. I came from a sin­gle par­ent home. But there are more dis­trac­tions to­day. When my moth­er grew up ten of us, a "Bad­john" was the biggest thing you might hear of in the dis­trict. There was more con­trol in the vil­lage to take care of that child. (Lament­ing) Not so to­day.

Mr Philbert, peo­ple are say­ing that the mur­der rate is this high be­cause the killers know they can get way with it. Isn't that an in­dict­ment against the Po­lice Ser­vice?

No. I don't think so, and in a way you are point­ing at the in­ves­tiga­tive fac­tor and what does that re­ly on? Peo­ple. And we have now moved strong­ly to the sci­en­tif­ic part–DNA. But DNA is not mag­ic, so both are ex­treme­ly im­por­tant.

I take no plea­sure in say­ing this, but a lot of peo­ple have lost con­fi­dence in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

A lot of peo­ple.

What are you do­ing to re­store that con­fi­dence?

You have to get back to or­di­nary polic­ing, and that is what we are do­ing when we dis­ci­pline all these of­fi­cers who are at vari­ance with the pub­lic; who do not un­der­stand what good cus­tomer ser­vice is, whose idea it is to break the poli­cies, prob­a­bly steal peo­ple's things, beat peo­ple up. We have to deal with that, and let the pub­lic know that the Po­lice Ser­vice does not ac­cept that.

Mr Com­mis­sion­er, on a scale of one to ten, what is the lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline in the TTPS?

No mat­ter what fig­ure you put, it is bad, so it is dif­fi­cult to give a fig­ure, but I think I would put it be­tween two to three. It is not good. And you are see­ing the re­sults reg­u­lar­ly in terms of po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing charged and what not.

Mr Philbert, how con­fi­dent are you over the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty's op­ti­mism that the 2009 homi­cide fig­ure would not be as high as last year's?

I am con­fi­dent, and I would tell you why. We were see­ing a drop be­fore that hor­ren­dous week­end with 12 killings; we were 12 be­hind the fig­ure for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. To­day, I think we may be on par or even be­hind on last year's num­ber.

Are there any coun­selling ser­vice in the TTPS to, per­haps, pre­vent po­lice of­fi­cers from vi­o­lent­ly deal­ing with do­mes­tic prob­lems, as we have seen in the re­cent past?

Yes. But the best way to have it done is with the same po­lice of­fi­cers who are around to pick it up and say: "Look, I no­tice that some­thing is go­ing wrong with my col­league...It is serous."

In oth­er words, be­ing your broth­er's keep­er?

(Point­ing to the wall clock in his of­fice) Yes. And it is not to keep his bad ways; It is to keep the in­tegri­ty of the ser­vice and him out of trou­ble as well.

Fi­nal­ly, is it true, Mr Philbert, ac­cord­ing to some crit­ics, that the TTPS is not equipped with all the re­sources to take the fight to the crim­i­nals?

Per­haps, we are not get­ting enough, but you see, get­ting what you need goes with oth­er things. When you say re­sources, peo­ple think about a car and more men. It is more than that. I be­lieve in tech­nol­o­gy, and I strong­ly be­lieve the ser­vice should be tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven.