Derek Achong

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams yes­ter­day urged the pub­lic to keep the faith in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice as he promised to root out all rogue of­fi­cers.He made the call even as an of­fi­cer ap­peared in court charged with the rob­bery of two Chi­nese busi­ness­men last week.

Speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Williams ad­mit­ted that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice's (TTPS) rep­u­ta­tion had been tar­nished by re­cent in­ci­dents in which po­lice of­fi­cers have been ac­cused of com­mit­ting crimes.

"To­day I want to give the pub­lic the as­sur­ance that the TTPS is staffed with a ma­jor­i­ty of of­fi­cers who are hon­est, law abid­ing and com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing their oblig­a­tions and oath in the no­ble pro­fes­sion of polic­ing.

"In­stances like these will be the ex­cep­tion and we will be do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to min­imise the re­cur­rence of events like the one," Williams said.He sought to as­sure the pub­lic that all al­le­ga­tions made against po­lice of­fi­cers were treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly and that those ac­cused were not giv­en favourable treat­ment.

"The TTPS will take a tough ap­proach to any crim­i­nal con­duct which is al­leged against any po­lice of­fi­cer. The pub­lic is vest­ing trust in the TTPS and we must do noth­ing to un­der­mine this. Clear de­ci­sive and time­ly ac­tion will be tak­en in every case to re­move what we can de­scribe as the rogue el­e­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice," Williams said.

In a press re­lease is­sued lat­er in the day, he not­ed that since 2012, 150 of­fi­cers, vary­ing in rank from con­sta­ble to As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP), had been sus­pend­ed by the TTPS af­ter be­ing charged with crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der, mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, per­vert­ing the course of pub­lic jus­tice, sedi­tion, as­sault and dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

Dur­ing the ear­li­er press con­fer­ence, while he re­fused to com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to last week's rob­bery, which is still on­go­ing, Williams said pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed that the group of men re­spon­si­ble for the crime were not all po­lice of­fi­cers.

"I don't want us to go away with the as­sump­tion that all that you have seen in that video are po­lice of­fi­cers," he said, as he re­ferred to a short video of CCTV footage of the in­ci­dent which has been broad­cast on so­cial me­dia web­sites.

The video clip clear­ly shows a group of men, dressed in what ap­pear to be po­lice uni­forms, ar­riv­ing at the busi­ness­man's Clax­ton Bay home in a po­lice ve­hi­cle.

Asked about the im­pact of so­cial me­dia in as­sist­ing the po­lice in solv­ing crimes, Williams en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to post videos of sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty and crimes.

"We have no ob­jec­tion to the cit­i­zens putting videos they have record­ed on so­cial me­dia but we would want them to pro­vide the TTPS with as much as­sis­tance as pos­si­ble," he said.

How­ev­er, he said as a re­sult of the in­ci­dent, the TTPS had amend­ed the pro­to­cols for po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ing raids and ex­e­cut­ing search war­rants.

"We will enure that po­lice raids and search­es are not con­duct­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers with­out vis­i­ble po­lice uni­form. That will as­sist us in en­sur­ing that the cit­i­zens out there do not fa­cil­i­tate any­one just say­ing po­lice.

"Who­ev­er comes must be in po­lice uni­form and must pro­vide some feed­back in terms of ID. Po­lice of­fi­cers are sup­posed to car­ry ID cards and that can be de­mand­ed by a cit­i­zen," Williams said.

As he re­newed calls to cit­i­zens to part­ner with the po­lice in the fu­ture, Williams said cit­i­zens would be pro­tect­ed through the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme if they pro­vid­ed tips and in­for­ma­tion to po­lice

"There is no per­fect so­lu­tion. We have to build back the con­fi­dence and trust and the on­ly way we can do that is by show­ing that we elim­i­nate in­ci­dents with po­lice of­fi­cers and be tough and time­ly with it. But if we elim­i­nate these in­ci­dents, it will get us clos­er to the point of the cit­i­zens recog­nis­ing that any­one com­ing to their home dressed in po­lice uni­form can be trust­ed," he said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) David West agreed that the po­lice's rep­u­ta­tion was di­min­ished with each in­ci­dent of of­fi­cers com­mit­ting a crime.

"Pub­lic trust in the TTPS has been erod­ed by the nu­mer­ous counts of al­leged crim­i­nal be­hav­iour of its mem­bers. Whilst most cit­i­zens are aware that these rep­re­sent a mi­nor­i­ty in TTPS, the re­cent fre­quen­cy of these in­ci­dents has been a cause of con­cern to cit­i­zens of T&T," he said.

West pro­vid­ed PCA sta­tis­tics which showed that be­tween 2014 and 2015, there were 362 com­plaints made against po­lice of­fi­cers and 367 be­tween 2015 and this year, a mar­gin­al in­crease.He sug­gest­ed that for con­fi­dence to im­prove, the pub­lic must be shown that of­fi­cers were pros­e­cut­ed and con­vict­ed for their al­leged crimes.

"For pub­lic con­fi­dence to be re­stored, it's for the pub­lic to see the al­leged of­fend­ers, if when tried and if found guilty, they are swift­ly re­moved from the ser­vice," he said, as he al­so called for stronger cri­te­ria for re­cruit­ing of­fi­cers and psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing for new re­cruits.