Asha Javeed

Ad­mit­ting that racial ten­sions ex­ist with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Fitzroy Fred­er­icks said the state­ments made by Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) chair­man, Nizam Mo­hammed, were on­ly "fu­el­ing fire." He said Mo­hammed words can on­ly "cre­ate di­vi­sions in the Po­lice Ser­vice" and were "dan­ger­ous." Fred­er­icks, in a press con­fer­ence held at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing yes­ter­day, said it was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan who first raised the is­sue of eth­nic im­bal­ance at a meet­ing with the Po­lice Ser­vice, which in­clud­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in Jan­u­ary.

"He called us to a meet­ing and we were re­al­ly blud­geoned with such a state­ment that the Po­lice Ser­vice does not re­flect the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the coun­try....We don't know where these things are com­ing from," he said. "With­in the Po­lice Ser­vice and by ex­ten­sion the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, af­ter al­most 50 years of in­de­pen­dence, I am say­ing it's a very ret­ro­grade state­ment for some­body at his lev­el such a high pro­file of­fice." "We didn't feel too hap­py about it then, as we feel now," he said. Last Fri­day, Mo­hammed told the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment ex­am­in­ing the op­er­a­tions of the PSC that while 50 per cent of T&T's pop­u­la­tion was of East In­di­an de­scent, the Po­lice Ser­vice ex­ec­u­tive did not re­flect this com­po­si­tion.

There have been calls for Mo­hammed and the head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Sergeant Anand Rame­sar to re­sign. Rame­sar had writ­ten a let­ter to Com­mis­sion of Po­lice (CoP) Dwayne Gibbs, with a copy to Mo­hammed, ex­press­ing con­cern with the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the Pro­mo­tion­al and Ad­vi­so­ry Board. Re­spond­ing to the re­cent de­vel­op­ments, Fred­er­icks said: "We feel that peo­ple, in such lev­el in the so­ci­ety, to seek to put for­ward those views know­ing ful­ly well there is a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive for where we are...I am cer­tain these peo­ple know their his­to­ry but I be­lieve it is a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to frus­trate our ef­forts and cre­ate some di­vi­sions.

"At the end of the day, we all have to live in T&T and the po­lice has to con­tin­ue to pro­tect the democ­ra­cy," he added. Re­fer­ring to the coun­try's his­to­ry, Fred­er­icks said that it was dif­fi­cult for the po­lice to at­tract re­cruits. He said lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers came from Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da and An­tigua be­fore In­de­pen­dence.

At that time, he not­ed, it was dif­fi­cult to at­tract East In­di­ans to the pro­fes­sion as they opt­ed to get in­to com­merce and agri­cul­ture. While he couldn't give an eth­nic break­down of the 7,000-plus Po­lice Ser­vice, Fred­er­icks said re­cruit­ment and pro­mo­tions were trans­par­ent process­es. Fred­er­icks dis­missed ques­tions based on con­cerns by of­fi­cers of pos­si­ble vic­itimi­sa­tion as they sit pro­mo­tion­al ex­ams to­day.

He point­ed out that for the third year, the Penn State Jus­tice and Safe­ty In­sti­tute would be over­see­ing the ex­ams. Pro­mo­tions were done sole­ly on mer­it, he stressed. At­tempts to con­tact Mo­hammed, Rame­sar and AG Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day were fu­tile. The Guardian was told that Mo­hammed was not at home.

Mean­while, re­tired act­ing CoP, James Philbert, said yes­ter­day that Mo­hammed's state­ments were "lu­di­crous." "It is wrong," he told the Guardian. "The state­ment did not say that there were in­com­pe­tent or dis­hon­est Africans...It just said there were too many Africans. There is no re­al ba­sis for such a state­ment. How could sen­si­ble peo­ple make such a state­ment?"

He said as an "African" and as a for­mer head of the po­lice, he felt a se­ri­ous bur­den to com­ment on this is­sue. He de­scribed it "as the most ab­surd state­ment in the un­der­stand­ing of the Po­lice Ser­vice."

Philbert ex­plained that he joined the Po­lice Ser­vice in 1967 when his salary was a mea­gre $205 a month. He ob­served that those salaries were not at­trac­tive then for peo­ple to pur­sue the pro­fes­sion.

And while he's seen the Po­lice Ser­vice grow in­to a dy­nam­ic, mul­ti-cul­tur­al force, he said race should not be an is­sue. "Peo­ple must be plur­al...We must be care­ful on as­pects of di­ver­si­ty," he said. "I on­ly hope the de­ci­sion that was made for me was not be­cause of race be­cause that would be hurt­ful." (AJ)