Geisha Kow­lessar

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki is not sur­prised that the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion is try­ing to stop the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing pi­lot project. The as­so­ci­a­tion plans to file an in­junc­tion in the High Court against the project this week. Af­fi­davits are ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted to­day. In a one-on-one in­ter­view with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian, Ewats­ki said: "Noth­ing sur­pris­es me any­more." He strong­ly de­fend­ed the ini­tia­tive in­sist­ing that the days of po­lice of­fi­cers sleep­ing in sta­tions and us­ing gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles for pri­vate busi­ness are over. On March 21, the as­so­ci­a­tion served Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs with a three-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter which ac­cused him of "bul­ly­ing" of­fi­cers to work be­yond their stip­u­lat­ed work­ing hours and tak­ing "uni­lat­er­al ac­tions" which were "op­pres­sive and il­le­gal."

Gibbs was al­so ac­cused of in­tro­duc­ing work­ing arrange­ments, un­der the um­brel­la of the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, that were in­con­sis­tent with ser­vice reg­u­la­tions and mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing agreed to in 1984 and 2001. The let­ter al­so stat­ed that mem­bers had not agreed to any vari­a­tion in their terms and con­di­tions, and that any agree­ment was lim­it­ed to the project in West­ern Di­vi­sion, which had run its course. But Ewats­ki, the Deputy CoP in charge of Op­er­a­tions, said from the very in­cep­tion of the project, the as­so­ci­a­tion was in­vit­ed to air its con­cerns. The re­sult, he said, was that: "They spoke in gen­er­al­i­ties in the past about hav­ing some con­cerns rel­a­tive to the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, and when we asked them to be spe­cif­ic about it, they have not been spe­cif­ic. "So now this let­ter that has been served clar­i­fies some of these con­cerns ap­par­ent­ly," he added. Ewats­ki said month­ly meet­ings were al­so held with the as­so­ci­a­tion and if there were is­sues deemed "ur­gent," they could be ad­dressed in ad­vance.

The project, he said, had achieved much, not­ing that there was a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in crime in the "hot-spot" area of the West­ern Di­vi­sion, where the ini­tia­tive was launched on April 20, 2011. "Peo­ple may say that the state of emer­gency had some­thing to do with it-but that's not even count­ing the state of emer­gency," he said. "We al­so re­alise the pub­lic in West­ern Di­vi­sion was pleased with see­ing the po­lice much more than they did in the past. "They were pleased with the lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion that they had with the po­lice when they went to the po­lice sta­tion...the pro­fes­sion­al­ism that was shown, the cus­tomer ser­vice that was shown. "Many peo­ple came up to me and said they no­ticed a dif­fer­ence." This, he added, was the type of polic­ing that peo­ple were de­mand­ing. Some se­nior of­fi­cers claimed they had re­duced crime in the di­vi­sion even be­fore Gibbs or Ewats­ki as­sumed of­fice in 2010.

Say­ing this was one of the "many ru­mours" he had heard, Ewats­ki added: "I do not know whether or not crime was de­creas­ing to any sig­nif­i­cant de­gree-but dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the pi­lot project, crime has de­creased at a fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant lev­el in West­ern Di­vi­sion, across the board." The project was al­so ex­pand­ed to Cen­tral Di­vi­sion where it was launched at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion in Feb­ru­ary this year. Pos­i­tive re­sults from that area, Ewats­ki added, had al­so led to a gen­er­al trans­for­ma­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice. "To­ba­go has on­ly been up and run­ning for a short num­ber of weeks," Ewats­ki said. He said they would con­tin­ue to look at the im­pact the new de­ploy­ment method was hav­ing on "our abil­i­ty to be more ef­fec­tive and more ef­fi­cient."

Track­ing sys­tem for po­lice ve­hi­cles

Ewats­ki said some Po­lice Ser­vice ve­hi­cles had al­ready been out­fit­ted with the Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS). He added that the de­vice would soon be placed in all ve­hi­cles. This would make the po­lice more ac­count­able, he said. "Dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od, we could mon­i­tor how long a pa­trol car has been pa­trolling," Ewats­ki said. "On top of that, we could gen­er­ate re­ports to show ex­act­ly where a pa­trol ve­hi­cle was mov­ing with­in the di­vi­sion, how of­ten it was parked some­where-so that ac­count­abil­i­ty as­pect is built in­to this ini­tia­tive." This, he said, would give the pub­lic greater con­fi­dence that the po­lice were ac­tu­al­ly work­ing.

"We get on a dai­ly re­port, the ac­tiv­i­ty logs of our po­lice of­fi­cers, and they have to ac­count for their time while they are on du­ty," he said. "While they are on their shift, they have to ac­count for every­thing they do, in­clud­ing their pa­trol time." He said those records must al­so be jus­ti­fied by su­per­vi­sors and di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders.

De­ploy­ment meth­ods

The ba­sis of the 21st-cen­tu­ry pi­lot ini­tia­tive is, in ef­fect, de­ploy­ment meth­ods. "I do not know any po­lice agency in any de­vel­oped coun­try that de­ploys their of­fi­cers in a man­ner that we do here in Trinidad and To­ba­go in the di­vi­sions where the ini­tia­tive is not yet op­er­a­tional," Ewats­ki said. If the coun­try want­ed to move to­wards a mod­ern Po­lice Ser­vice, he in­sist­ed, con­tem­po­rary tech­niques must be em­braced. He al­so de­fend­ed the con­ver­sion of the Four Roads and Care­nage po­lice sta­tions in­to "ser­vice cen­tres" that op­er­ate from 9 am to 9 pm. He said this al­lowed more of­fi­cers to be out on the streets pa­trolling and able to re­spond to trou­ble calls more rapid­ly. "In the ser­vice cen­tres, we have a very small staffing lev­el be­cause they on­ly have to be open 12 hours a day and when they are open you on­ly have about three po­lice work­ing in that cen­tre and some­times even less, some­times even one po­lice of­fi­cer and two of our po­lice sup­port po­lice of­fi­cers." Ewats­ki said. Sup­port of­fi­cers are re­tired of­fi­cers who have been brought back in­to the Po­lice Ser­vice on con­tract.

Ewats­ki added that there was al­so no need now for the pub­lic to al­ways come to the po­lice. He said: "They could phone us. We would come to them. That is how mod­ern polic­ing works." In­creased pa­trols and height­ened po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, he said, al­so led to more crim­i­nals be­ing caught, in­clud­ing those try­ing to es­cape from a crime scene. "That's the ba­sic foun­da­tion of this de­ploy­ment mod­el...We need to get our of­fi­cers out of the sta­tions," he said. "Po­lice of­fi­cers do not come to a sta­tion and spend the ma­jor­i­ty of time in the sta­tion in mod­ern po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tions." He said the de­ci­sion to op­er­ate the ser­vice cen­tres dur­ing lim­it­ed open­ing hours was made on the ba­sis of de­mand. "When we chose the time to close those sta­tions for 12-hour pe­ri­ods, we looked at when peo­ple were ac­tu­al­ly com­ing in­to those sta­tions," he said. "Very few peo­ple were com­ing and ac­cess­ing those ser­vices af­ter 9 pm. "So to run an ef­fi­cient Po­lice Ser­vice we need to look at be­ing able to ra­tio­nalise our ser­vices. "Why would we want to have those sta­tions open when there's no­body com­ing?"

Can this ap­proach be jus­ti­fied when crime hap­pens round the clock?" Ewats­ki said the in­creased pa­trols act­ed as a de­ter­rent. "It's not as if we have aban­doned those ar­eas...The pa­trol of­fi­cers have a greater pres­ence and a greater abil­i­ty to re­spond," he added. Say­ing he knew the pub­lic still com­plained about poor po­lice re­sponse, he in­sist­ed that for the most part, the new de­ploy­ment method was work­ing. "I am not go­ing to be naive...Some­times there is still a de­lay, a lag in be­ing able to re­spond," Ewats­ki said. "We are go­ing to con­tin­ue to work on that, be­cause we are go­ing to con­tin­ue to sen­si­tise the pub­lic that is the type of ser­vice we can pro­vide. "And we have to con­tin­ue to re­in­force in our po­lice of­fi­cers that when some­body calls, we will come to them."

Breaks stag­gered

Pa­trol of­fi­cers are al­lowed meal and rest breaks but Ewats­ki was adamant that there would be no sleep­ing in sta­tions. "We stag­ger our breaks to al­ways en­sure we do have of­fi­cers out on the street," he said. "But for any­one to think that our of­fi­cers were work­ing 12 hours with­out any type of break-that is ab­solute­ly in­cor­rect." Qui­et rooms, he said, had re­placed dor­mi­to­ries. "When of­fi­cers take their break, it isn't a sleep break...I am not aware of any po­lice agency in a de­vel­oped coun­try that pays their of­fi­cers to sleep," he said. "That doesn't hap­pen, and I think the pub­lic and our po­lice of­fi­cers know that. "Polic­ing is not the type of pro­fes­sion that you could come to a sta­tion and sleep and get paid for it." He said a mi­nor­i­ty of of­fi­cers were not ded­i­cat­ed and there­fore re­sist­ed change. "Change can be chal­leng­ing, change can be threat­en­ing and change can be very un­com­fort­able," Ewats­ki said. "But we're ask­ing our po­lice of­fi­cers to em­brace this change be­cause there is a need to change. "If we don't change the way we de­liv­er our polic­ing ser­vices, we're go­ing to ex­pect the same re­sults."

The let­ter

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter claimed breach­es of the reg­u­la­tions were:

1. Po­lice dri­vers have to dri­ve for more than four hours with­out be­ing al­lowed to rest, and this vi­o­lates reg­u­la­tions and in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice.

2. Of­fi­cers were ros­tered for four con­sec­u­tive work­days, so that they worked in ex­cess of the stip­u­lat­ed 40 hours by the end of the fourth day.

3. Mem­bers called out on their rest days were threat­ened with dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion if they failed to re­port for du­ty.

4. Pay­ment of over­time breached the MOU.

5. Mem­bers who re­ceived com­mut­ed over­time pay were be­ing bul­lied to work hours which were "not with­in the spir­it" of the 12 hours per week agreed un­der the MOU.

6. Ex­tra meal al­lowances were not be­ing paid.