Shal­iza Has­sanali

If Dwayne Gibbs, the coun­try's next Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er does not get sup­port from his low­er rank of­fi­cers, he will find him­self in se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ty when man­ag­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and ex­e­cut­ing his man­date. The warn­ing comes from crim­i­nol­o­gist Prof Ramesh De­osaran as cit­i­zens wait with bat­ed breath for Gibbs and fel­low Cana­di­an, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki to ar­rive on our shores to stem the crime wave sweep­ing the na­tion.

Gibbs is ex­pect­ed to take home a month­ly salary of $132,916 and Ewats­ki $106,333. De­osaran said while Gibbs is gear­ing up to take up a very chal­leng­ing and se­ri­ous as­sign­ment, the most crit­i­cal thing in his per­for­mance will be the ex­tent to which his low­er rank of­fi­cers are pre­pared to sup­port him. "It does not mat­ter how bril­liant or com­pe­tent he (Gibbs) is. If he does not get sup­port from the ground forces as it were, he will find se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties in man­ag­ing the po­lice ser­vice it­self, and worst yet try to re­duce crime–the job for which he was hired," said De­osaran.

Full part­ner­ship need­ed

Hav­ing as­sumed the role as Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) act­ing pres­i­dent, De­osaran said the job of the low­er rank of­fi­cers is de­tec­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tions and re­spond­ing to dis­tress calls, stat­ing that with­out their co­op­er­a­tion and ef­fort the new top cop will go nowhere. "The big­ger ques­tion is, will he (Gibbs) be able to per­form the very se­ri­ous task at hand. The most crit­i­cal thing in his per­for­mance, and to get an ear­ly start, will be the ex­tent to which from con­sta­ble to su­per­in­ten­dent will sup­port him." While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was quick to point out that Gibbs' con­tract can be ter­mi­nat­ed if he fails to per­form, De­osaran said an analy­sis of the sup­port Gibbs re­ceives from the ser­vice will be of im­por­tance in as­sess­ing him. De­osaran said the first thing Gibbs should do is vis­it all po­lice sta­tions and hear the con­cerns of those in the field and see how best he can im­prove each sta­tion.

LEFT: Dwayne Gibbs, the coun­try's next Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

He al­so strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that Gibbs, his ex­ec­u­tives and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy meet and dis­cuss their first plan of ac­tion with UTT. On Mon­day, in the pres­ence of Sandy at UTT's O'Meara cam­pus, De­osaran an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment was part­ner­ing with pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms and UTT to com­bat crime at all lev­els. "It makes no sense to quar­rel about whether Gibbs is a for­eign­er or not, we have to ad­dress the is­sue of crime. We have to get all on board. What we need is a full part­ner­ship to con­tin­ue re­duc­ing the crime rate." With­out the part­ner­ship at the ground lev­el, De­osaran said Gibbs' du­ties will be an up­hill bat­tle.

A sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach

Com­ment­ing on the $1000 du­ty al­lowance of­fered by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in the 2010 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, De­osaran said the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion did not have a prop­er mea­sure­ment tool to eval­u­ate the of­fi­cers' per­for­mance. "That is­sue is still in abeyance. The on­ly way we can es­tab­lish, on both sides fair­ly, is to have a prop­er mea­sur­ing in­stru­ment for the of­fi­cers' per­for­mance which we do not have as yet. We need to have a more sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach with po­lice per­for­mance and trans­for­ma­tion of the ser­vice." Fail­ure to es­tab­lish an em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­gramme, qual­i­ty as­sur­ance, an ef­fec­tive per­for­mance mea­sur­ing in­stru­ment, De­osaran stat­ed the trans­for­ma­tion of the ser­vice will nev­er be prop­er­ly ef­fect­ed.

Join hands

In her bud­get de­bate pre­sen­ta­tion in Par­lia­ment on Thurs­day, Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Don­na Cox ap­pealed to the rul­ing Gov­ern­ment to sub­stan­tial­ly in­crease po­lice of­fi­cers' pay, which she claimed the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment had ap­proved and sub­mit­ted to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer. With re­cent news by act­ing CoP Stephen Williams that mur­ders were on the de­crease, De­osaran said this should serve as an in­spi­ra­tion and build con­fi­dence in the ser­vice, urg­ing of­fi­cers to join hands with Gibbs and give him their fullest co­op­er­a­tion. De­osaran al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment of the bi­cy­cle pa­trols, which he stat­ed should first com­mence in con­gest­ed Port-of-Spain and in some rur­al ar­eas. "While we have mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy we have to bring back some of the old time polic­ing which will help es­tab­lish con­tacts with neigh­bour­hoods."