Dana See­ta­hal

Last Fri­day, Par­lia­ment ve­toed the can­di­date nom­i­nat­ed as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. The rea­son for do­ing so was not be­cause he was a for­eign­er and not qual­i­fied for ap­point­ment. In­stead, the sug­ges­tion was that be­cause the can­di­date had been in­volved in the 2008 process for se­lec­tion of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, he should be dis­qual­i­fied. At a news con­fer­ence last Thurs­day, my col­league Is­rael Khan sug­gest­ed that the CoP must be a cit­i­zen of T&T. This was so, he claimed, be­cause a po­lice trainee must be a cit­i­zen, and there­fore, since one worked one's way up the lad­der of pro­mo­tion, it fol­lowed that the CoP must be a cit­i­zen. That sounds fine un­til one looked at all the law in this re­gard, as I did as a mem­ber of the Reg­u­la­tions Com­mit­tee in the Sen­ate in 2008. It is true that the 2007 Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions spec­i­fy that a "can­di­date for ap­point­ment as a trainee" shall be a cit­i­zen of T&T.

He must al­so un­der­go a poly­graph, drugs test­ing and "be not less than 18 years and not more than 35 years of age..." Clear­ly, this cri­te­ri­on ap­plies on­ly to trainees who are de­fined as "a per­son un­der­go­ing ini­tial train­ing with a view to be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer." Thus, any per­son de­sirous of be­ing a can­di­date to train as a po­lice of­fi­cer must be a cit­i­zen. In con­trast, the same reg­u­la­tions which deal with ap­point­ment of First Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers state sim­ply that he may be se­lect­ed from among of­fi­cers in the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion or from out­side the ser­vice. The post of Com­mis­sion­er falls with­in the First Di­vi­sion. Fur­ther­more, the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion shall nom­i­nate per­sons for ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er or Deputy in ac­cor­dance with the cri­te­ria pre­scribed by Or­der of the Pres­i­dent.

The supreme law of the land, there­fore, au­tho­ris­es the Pres­i­dent to spec­i­fy the cri­te­ria for ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er. The cri­te­ria do not say that the Com­mis­sion­er must be a cit­i­zen. Per­haps, they should. The law gov­ern­ing se­lec­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy is con­tained in or­ders made un­der the hand of the Pres­i­dent and pub­lished in Le­gal No­tices 101 and 102 of 2009. LN 101 re­lates to the cri­te­ria which are ba­si­cal­ly the same as they were in 2008, when the last nom­i­na­tions were made. These in­clude a de­gree and at least 15 years' ex­pe­ri­ence of in­creas­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in law en­force­ment. There are oth­er sub­jec­tive cri­te­ria, such as lead­er­ship skills "which en­ables him to mo­ti­vate, in­spire and en­gen­der trust." Al­so in­clud­ed are man­age­ment skills, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, com­mit­ment and in­tegri­ty.

The se­lec­tion process is out­lined in LN 102. The ser­vices of a firm ex­pe­ri­enced in as­sess­ing top po­lice man­agers is con­tract­ed by the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion. The firm then ad­ver­tis­es the post and re­ceives ap­pli­ca­tions. The "most suit­able can­di­dates" are then short-list­ed and sub­ject­ed to the "best prac­tice se­cu­ri­ty vet­ting." As to the as­sess­ment pan­el, all that is re­quired is that at least one of the per­sons on the pan­el must be of equiv­a­lent or high­er rank than the can­di­date. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion be­comes in­volved on­ly when it is pre­sent­ed with the short list. They were pre­sent­ed with such a list by Penn State, which was the firm se­lect­ed. The PSC deals on­ly with the five top can­di­dates on the short list. They re­view the as­sess­ment and con­duct their own in­ter­views. They gath­er in­for­ma­tion, and at this stage that would in­clude se­cu­ri­ty checks and the like. They then pre­pare their own or­der of mer­it list from this five. This is then sent to the Pres­i­dent.

Af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion

The Con­sti­tu­tion de­ter­mines what hap­pens af­ter the PSC makes a se­lec­tion for the post of CoP. Once the names are sub­mit­ted to the Pres­i­dent, he is re­quired to is­sue a no­ti­fi­ca­tion spec­i­fy­ing the per­son nom­i­nat­ed for the po­si­tions of ei­ther Com­mis­sion­er or Deputy.

This no­ti­fi­ca­tion is sub­ject to an af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives as stat­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion. There is no Sen­ate in­volve­ment here. The PSC can ap­point the Com­mis­sion­er on­ly af­ter the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ap­proves the no­ti­fi­ca­tion. The bot­tom line is that the gov­ern­ment of the day de­ter­mines whether or not a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date will get the job as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Pre­vi­ous­ly, it was the Prime Min­is­ter who had the ve­to. The law has been amend­ed to give this pow­er to the House. Last Fri­day, the House ve­toed the ap­point­ment of the can­di­date rec­om­mend­ed as Com­mis­sion­er, al­though they ap­proved those nom­i­nat­ed as deputies.

The ac­tion ve­to­ing the Com­mis­sion­er is, in ef­fect, the same as what tran­spired when the then PNM gov­ern­ment ve­toed the se­lec­tion of Stephen Williams as Com­mis­sion­er–for no good rea­son. In the cur­rent sce­nario, we are left with the in­di­ca­tion that be­cause the can­di­date was in­volved in the se­lec­tion process in 2008, he should not now be se­lect­ed: he is dis­qual­i­fied. Frankly, I would have some con­cerns my­self. I al­so find it strange that a per­son who is in 2010 a Deputy Com­mis­sion­er in An­tigua, with a po­lice strength of about 300, could be found to be qual­i­fied in 2008 to sit on an as­sess­ment pan­el se­lect­ing a CoP for T&T with a strength of over 6,000 po­lice of­fi­cers. What is even more odd is that then Se­nior Supt Stephen Williams (now Asst Com­mis­sion­er) was the No 1 choice of the PSC as Com­mis­sion­er. This was af­ter he was short-list­ed by Penn State. This time around, he did not make the short list. No lo­cal made the short list. To my mind, the se­lec­tion process in which Penn State en­gaged must be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Some­thing is not right.