Tony Fras­er

Find­ing a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is not mere­ly about re­cruit­ing the man with the right skills-set and ex­pe­ri­ence, and if that in­di­vid­ual be a for­eign­er then so be it. A Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is one of the prin­ci­pal of­fi­cers of the State, at the helm of the main in­sti­tu­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Hav­ing a na­tion­al in that po­si­tion is about the so­ci­ety demon­strat­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to gov­ern it­self 48 years af­ter hav­ing achieved po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence. If the ar­gu­ment is that there is no one with­in the ser­vice with the ca­pac­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly per­form the job of com­mis­sion­er, that would be an in­dict­ment not on­ly on the se­nior of­fi­cers in the ser­vice but on the po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive man­agers of the ser­vice over the pe­ri­od 1962 to the present.

So too if there is no one with the ca­pac­i­ty to be CoP it will be a mark of plan­ning and fore­sight de­fi­cien­cy on suc­ceed­ing Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the se­nior of­fi­cers and sec­ond di­vi­sion as­so­ci­a­tions. Not with­out re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the wider so­ci­ety, which in dif­fer­ent ways would have al­lowed the ser­vice to grow-up with­out nur­tur­ing the kinds of in­di­vid­u­als to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the Po­lice Ser­vice at the very top. The me­dia, the ju­di­cia­ry, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions, the labour move­ment, the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and every oth­er in­sti­tu­tion of sig­nif­i­cance must al­so share in the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if in­deed we do not have an ad­e­quate leader in the Po­lice Ser­vice. How­ev­er, it is far from a proven fact that there are no of­fi­cers amongst the ranks with the abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry out the job of CoP, and this is dis­tinct from the fact that the Po­lice Ser­vice has per­formed bad­ly in in­ter­dic­tion. But it can­not be that the en­tire re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the crim­i­nal mad­ness must hinge on the Po­lice Ser­vice and the CoP.

The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment did every­thing pos­si­ble to have a for­eign­er in­stalled in the job: the Prime Min­is­ter ve­toed the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to have Stephen Williams ap­point­ed; the Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly en­sured that the re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria were re­or­gan­ised to favour the se­lec­tion of a for­eign­er. But then that was not sur­pris­ing. The last ad­min­is­tra­tion not on­ly had a fetish with for­eign ex­per­tise, but se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mined lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions and ca­pac­i­ty as a ra­tio­nal for turn­ing al­most as a first re­sponse to "for­eign." For its de­vel­op­ment mod­el it ob­served coun­tries such as Dubai and the Irish fi­nan­cial sec­tor and at­tempt­ed to im­port their de­vel­op­ment ex­pe­ri­ence. Even with re­gard to man­ag­ing the res­i­dence of the Prime Min­is­ter and the staff re­quired, im­por­ta­tion of but­lers and maids was the pre­ferred op­tion. It may be con­sid­ered un­char­i­ta­ble to ob­serve that had the gov­ern­ment been true to its be­lief in for­eign tal­ent, it would have out­sourced the prime min­is­ter­ship, giv­en that the lo­cal in the job was per­form­ing dis­as­trous­ly.

The ar­gu­ment of find­ing the tal­ent by open­ing the field in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to get the best qual­i­fied and most ex­pe­ri­enced per­son for the job is un­fair and il­log­i­cal as a means of re­cruit­ing for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Most as­sured­ly, if the gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor and the av­er­age cit­i­zen were to ad­ver­tise abroad for every sig­nif­i­cant job avail­able in the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my, the ad­ver­tise­ments would at­tract ap­pli­cants of greater ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions from the in­dus­tri­al world for ob­vi­ous rea­sons re­lat­ing to the stage of de­vel­op­ment and train­ing. And this would sure­ly be the case of any de­vel­op­ing coun­try of sim­i­lar size and stage of de­vel­op­ment. It there­fore can­not be that a coun­try will seek to at­tract for­eign­ers for jobs at the high­est lev­els of the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my as a mat­ter of course. The po­si­tion of CoP has to do with the pride of a peo­ple as it holds sig­nif­i­cant sym­bol­ic im­por­tance; it is about mak­ing a state­ment to the na­tion­al and in­ter- na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty about the ca­pac­i­ty of a na­tion to man­age its in­ter­nal af­fairs.

Sure enough, tech­no­log­i­cal, ad­min­is­tra­tive, sci­en­tif­ic and foren­sic knowl­edge and in­for­ma­tion about polic­ing are now glob­al in the world of the 21st cen­tu­ry and should be utilised when­ev­er pos­si­ble. There­fore this col­umn is not ad­vo­cat­ing that T&T locks it­self out of this in­ter­na­tion­al stream of knowl­edge and in­for­ma­tion. Rather, it is say­ing that the coun­try can draw on the in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise. It is even use­ful to have high­ly qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced foren­sic tech­ni­cians here to trans­fer the knowl­edge and know-how in the meth­ods and prac­tices of good polic­ing. But it can­not be that the po­si­tion of CoP be hand­ed out to a for­eign­er with­out a se­ri­ous loss of self-worth, pride and sov­er­eign­ty. More­over, the prac­tice of bring­ing in for­eign com­mis­sion­ers in oth­er na­tions in the Caribbean to counter ex­plod­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has not worked; not in Ja­maica, not in An­tigua, not in St Lu­cia. And that is so for a num­ber of rea­sons. The first be­ing that ex­pect­ing some for­eign­er to fly in and cure the prob­lems of crime is to mis­un­der­stand the na­ture and depth of the mal­a­dy, crime be­ing a re­sult of the so­cial prob­lems of the so­ci­ety and is not go­ing to be re­solved by re­sort­ing to the so­lu­tion that has been so com­mon in post colo­nial so­ci­eties: call back the colonis­ing pow­ers, they cer­tain­ly know bet­ter than we do.

It is the same prac­tice of dis­be­lief in self which led the West In­dies Crick­et Board and es­tab­lish- ment to have ig­nored 75 years of gold­en ex­pe­ri­ence, dur­ing which time we pro­duced teams of in­di­vid­u­als of the high­est class pos­si­ble, and turn in­stead to groups of sec­ond-class Aus­tralian coach­es sim­ply be­cause it is in­grained in our think­ing that "for­eign" means su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty. This Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship cam­paigned on the ba­sis of self-suf­fi­cien­cy, com­mit­ted it­self to en- hanc­ing lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty and self-be­lief, there­fore it would be go­ing against all of that if it were to ac­cept that a lo­cal is not up to the task of be­ing CoP and so re­sort to bring­ing in a for­eign­er in this cru­cial po­si­tion of law en­force­ment. It will be up to the Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment to ve­to the rec­om­men­da­tion and make it known that it is seek­ing a na­tion­al for the job. This will give the Op­po­si­tion the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty where it stands on this mat­ter.