Shal­iza Has­sanali

Re­tired In­spec­tor of the Ot­tawa Po­lice Ser­vice God­frey "Ter­ry" Fri­day feels he has the per­fect polic­ing tech­nique that can bridge the gap be­tween the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try. If called up­on to share his wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing in T&T, Fri­day said he was will­ing to un­der­take the task. So much so, Fri­day said he has a crime plan which he wants to share with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph to help the coun­try of which he is proud. Fri­day said in Cana­da he de­vel­oped a team called Race Re­la­tions and Di­ver­si­ty Unit, tar­get­ing all mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty "which trained both po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty on un­der­stand­ing each oth­ers' roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties."

The unit helped both par­ties to turn hos­til­i­ty in­to a peace­ful and nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ment and suc­cess­ful­ly im­proved the re­la­tion­ships be­tween the po­lice and the mi­nor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties of Ot­tawa. Part of his du­ties from 1994 to 2002 en­tailed de­vel­op­ing, di­rect­ing and train­ing a unit to serve as a sup­port sys­tem to the po­lice ser­vice and com­mu­ni­ties on race re­la­tions and di­ver­si­ty is­sues.

Dif­fer­ent polic­ing tech­niques

Fri­day al­so de­signed, de­vel­oped and im­ple­ment­ed train­ing ini­tia­tives for the ser­vice. "Every com­mu­ni­ty re­quires dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to its polic­ing tech­niques," said Fri­day, who de­part­ed T&T's shores on March 7 for his USA home af­ter spend­ing a week on our soil. "You can­not shake hands with clenched fists. It's a recipe for dis­as­ter. You have to in­ter­act and reach down to the lev­el of the peo­ple to be ac­cept­ed. No po­lice of­fi­cers should be­have as if they are above the law." Fri­day not­ed that there are many as­pects which play a crit­i­cal role in polic­ing. While re­cruit­ing and train­ing were es­sen­tial, Fri­day said the restora­tion of con­fi­dence of peo­ple with­in com­mu­ni­ties was equal­ly im­por­tant.

"I am aware that no one per­son has all of the an­swers to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion faced by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. How­ev­er, it is by recog­nis­ing ideas and ef­forts of in­di­vid­u­als and groups who are con­cerned with a de­plorable sit­u­a­tion which makes an or­gan­i­sa­tion a healthy place for hope." Fri­day said over the years the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has de­gen­er­at­ed in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion that few peo­ple trust and re­spect. He al­so spoke about the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice be­ing tar­nished by cor­rup­tion and un­jus­ti­fied mur­ders.

Po­lice are ser­vants of the peo­ple

"One ba­sic fun­da­men­tal is­sue that lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers should al­ways bear in mind is that they are the ser­vants of the peo­ple." Fri­day said the po­lice must work hand-in-hand with com­mu­ni­ties in or­der to re­solve is­sues. Hav­ing worked on fos­ter­ing bet­ter re­la­tion­ships be­tween the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ty for the Ot­tawa Po­lice Ser­vice, Fri­day was sec­ond­ed to the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment's Race Re­la­tions Head of­fice in Cana­da. "Fight­ing crime is a nev­er end­ing frus­trat­ing bat­tle, which can nev­er be won. The po­lice must work in pur­suit of ad­dress­ing the fear of crime and the pre­ven­tion of crime. They must be able to build com­mu­ni­ties with hope and con­fi­dence," said Fri­day, who lec­tured at schools, com­mu­ni­ty groups and to his peers on crime pre­vent­ing and de­tec­tion.

Fri­day trav­elled through­out Cana­da, bridg­ing the gap be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers and com­mu­ni­ties. A grad­u­ate with Cana­di­an Cen­tre for Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion at St Paul's Uni­ver­si­ty, Fri­day has shown com­mit­ment to crime pre­ven­tion and prob­lem solv­ing. In 1997, he tried to as­sist the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice by pass­ing over the plan to the then UNC Gov­ern­ment, who he claim did not seem in­ter­est­ed. The doc­u­ment was al­so hand­ed to the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter they re­gained pow­er in 2001. "I have reached out to my coun­try of birth and was un­able to trig­ger an in­ter­est. Per­haps they may re­think their po­si­tion now."

About Fri­day

Born in Point Cumana, Care­nage, Fri­day mi­grat­ed to Cana­da in 1976 to be­come the sec­ond black po­lice of­fi­cer in the ser­vice, out of a field of 600 law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. In 1994, be­cause of his reg­u­lar in­ter­ac­tion with com­mu­ni­ties, Fri­day was asked by his po­lice chief to de­sign and de­vel­op a unit to en­hance the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the po­lice and cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, amid much racial ten­sion in Ot­tawa.