Geisha Kow­lessar

The Po­lice Ser­vice is be­ing al­lowed to de­cay to the ex­tent where low morale is re­al and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs treats his of­fi­cers with dis­dain. This is cou­pled with the fact that 80 per cent of of­fi­cers are act­ing in po­si­tions rang­ing from cor­po­ral to in­spec­tor, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.

Warn­er met with mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion for close to two hours yes­ter­day at the as­so­ci­a­tion's of­fice at Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion. "I am sur­prised the Po­lice Ser­vice has been al­lowed to de­cay, and I say de­cay in the strongest sense, to the lev­el it has been," he said.

"There have been com­plaints that the com­mis­sion­er treats his of­fi­cers with dis­dain...with an in­fe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex. "But I don't be­lieve the sit­u­a­tion can­not be re­versed." In the last four years, there have been no pro­mo­tions from the rank of cor­po­ral to sergeant. "There are act­ing sergeants at all the sta­tions," Warn­er said.

"This makes the Po­lice Ser­vice seem to be noth­ing bet­ter than what Hol­ly­wood is to­day...with a bun­dle of ac­tors, and no­body con­firmed in their po­si­tions." The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter al­so pub­licly apol­o­gised to the as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Sgt Anand Rame­sar, say­ing he had pre­con­ceived no­tions about the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"I made judg­ments on them with­out get­ting the facts, and now that I have the facts, I want to pub­licly apol­o­gise," Warn­er said. The meet­ing fo­cused on griev­ances and prob­lems and paving the way for­ward. Griev­ances, Warn­er added, were cat­e­gorised in­to two ar­eas, salary and man­age­ment.

"In terms of salaries, it is un­for­tu­nate that po­lice of­fi­cers have to go to court to deal with the is­sues of pro­mo­tion, have to go to the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion, and I felt these were is­sues which could have been dis­cussed around a ta­ble," he said. He said po­lice were al­so dis­gust­ed by the lev­el of "paral­y­sis" re­gard­ing pro­mo­tions, claim­ing favouritism had taint­ed the process.

"The as­so­ci­a­tion has said to me there are over 1,000 va­can­cies for pro­mo­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice and that pro­mo­tion has not on­ly been te­dious but se­lec­tive," Warn­er said. "In fact, they said 80 per cent of the Po­lice Ser­vice is act­ing. "Now how in God's name can you ex­pect men to per­form and give of their best if over the years they are act­ing in their po­si­tions?" he ques­tioned.

Be­cause of their dis­en­chant­ment, of­fi­cers have turned to moon­light­ing. The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so com­plained to Warn­er that Gibbs treat­ed po­lice with dis­re­spect. An in­stance was giv­en where a sergeant ap­plied to the com­mis­sion­er for an air pis­tol and was re­fused, but in the same breath was as told that Cana­di­an chil­dren "play with these things."

"What the po­lice are now do­ing in protest is pas­sive re­sis­tance, and that is why the pub­lic is suf­fer­ing, be­cause they don't know at this point where they can turn," the min­is­ter said. De­scrib­ing yes­ter­day's meet­ing as fruit­ful, Warn­er said he did not dis­agree with the as­so­ci­a­tion on a sin­gle point. "There must be some kind of mer­it in what these men are say­ing," he said.

A bonus sys­tem is al­so ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced if po­lice make a se­ri­ous dent in crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders. "If crime is at an all-time high and I say to these guys if they bring it down to 50 per cent, you are en­ti­tled to a bonus, and I see noth­ing wrong with that," Warn­er said. "I would pre­fer that sys­tem, be­cause it is tied in with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty." Warn­er is ex­pect­ed to meet with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and Gibbs next week.

Two cat­e­gories of SRPs

Full-time and part-time Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced in the Po­lice Ser­vice. Those who work full-time would then be ab­sorbed as reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers af­ter a cou­ple of years, Warn­er said. "That is once they meet the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and we would have those who work part-time," he added. Say­ing the SRPs were main­ly ex­ploit­ed, Warn­er sug­gest­ed they be paid the ex­tra $1,000 as or­di­nary po­lice of­fi­cers.

Of­fi­cers at­tack­ing sys­tem

Rame­sar said be­cause the po­lice were for­bid­den to protest open­ly, they were "at­tack­ing the sys­tem" in their own way. "There is a very low morale in the Po­lice Ser­vice and there are a lot of sys­tems that are caus­ing a silent re­sis­tance," he said.