Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Gideon Dick­son and crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad sup­port the de­ci­sion to hire for­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams as a con­sul­tant to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

Williams was hired as a con­sul­tant at $800 an hour for 120 hours in June and Sep­tem­ber last year. Williams told Guardian Me­dia last week that he was hired as a con­sul­tant and not as an ad­vi­sor.

Asked about this, Dick­son said giv­en his ex­pe­ri­ence, Williams was per­fect for the po­si­tion.

“Mr Williams be­ing a for­mer as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent and a ca­reer of­fi­cer would have con­tributed tremen­dous­ly in the ar­eas of ad­min­is­tra­tion and ev­i­dence-led polic­ing” he said, adding that the as­so­ci­a­tion had no is­sue with Williams con­tribut­ing to the strate­gic lead­er­ship of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Dick­son said even the as­so­ci­a­tion has had to call on Williams for as­sis­tance, as he had some 40 years of ex­pe­ri­ence and rel­e­vant in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge of the TTPS, as he re­tired on­ly in 2020.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments, Seep­er­sad said Williams’ CV was a tes­ta­ment to the wealth of knowl­edge he pos­sessed and hav­ing him share that with the po­lice could on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial.

He said, “Mr Williams is some­body who has con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence and con­sid­er­able train­ing as well. He has stud­ied wide­ly and he was a very long-serv­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. I will say that is def­i­nite­ly a good move on the part of the po­lice ser­vice. I hon­est­ly don’t think they can go wrong with hav­ing some­body of his cal­i­bre pro­vide ad­vice to the com­mis­sion­er.”

Williams told Guardian Me­dia last week that he had of­fered ser­vices in the form of lec­tures and train­ing work­shops for dif­fer­ent branch­es of the TTPS since his re­tire­ment, but this was the first time he was sought by a sit­ting CoP for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.

He ad­mit­ted that he of­fered ad­vice to se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers while his suc­ces­sor, Gary Grif­fith, was at the helm of the po­lice ser­vice.

Williams served as act­ing com­mis­sion­er be­fore Cana­di­ans Dwayne Gibbs and Jack Ewats­ki ar­rived in T&T in Sep­tem­ber 2010. He re­sumed the act­ing po­si­tion af­ter they left in 2012 and led the po­lice ser­vice for six years in 12 con­tin­u­ous six-month ex­ten­sions up to 2018, when Grif­fith took over.

With mur­ders be­ing the barom­e­ter for test­ing the per­for­mance of the po­lice and more so po­lice com­mis­sion­ers, Williams bat­tled keep­ing the mur­der toll be­low 300.

Based on the TTPS web­site, which has da­ta from 2013, the mur­der toll start­ed at 408. From 2014 to 2018, the mur­der toll was 403, 420, 462, 495 and 517.
Grif­fith took over the po­lice ser­vice in Au­gust 2018.

When com­pared to six oth­er po­lice com­mis­sion­ers in their first year, for the last 20 years, in­clud­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Williams did well.
He had the third low­est mur­der toll, the third high­est de­tec­tion rate and the third low­est over­all num­ber of se­ri­ous crimes re­port­ed and the sixth high­est de­tec­tion rate.

For that first year, com­pared to the oth­er six com­mis­sion­ers, Williams saw the fourth-high­est over­all crime sta­tis­tics.