On Wednes­day, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams took the big step of putting the re­cruit­ment of Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers (SRPs) on hold im­me­di­ate­ly, to in­ten­si­fy back­ground checks on prospec­tive can­di­dates.

Think about that for a mo­ment. The Act­ing CoP was so con­cerned that peo­ple with crim­i­nal back­grounds were slip­ping through the re­cruit­ment net and be­ing giv­en a mea­sure of law en­force­ment pow­er, that he felt com­pelled to stop the re­cruit­ment process com­plete­ly.

There has been an oft stat­ed sus­pi­cion of the Po­lice Ser­vice that be­com­ing an SRP is not the dif­fi­cult and rig­or­ous process that it should be–giv­en the heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­volved–and that any­one who want­ed to be­come one and did not have an ex­ist­ing po­lice record, could be­come one.

The greater num­ber of SRPs, it would seem, do their jobs well and con­sci­en­tious­ly, but there have been too many in­ci­dents and ac­cu­sa­tions against oth­ers.

In April 2011, a re­serve of­fi­cer was charged with the at­tempt­ed mur­der of his es­tranged girl­friend. Eight months lat­er, an SRP was placed on $75,000 bail, ac­cused of in­de­cent­ly as­sault­ing a mi­nor.

An­oth­er re­serve po­lice­man was placed on sus­pen­sion and bail in the sum of $150,000 in Ju­ly 2012 af­ter he tried to mur­der "a close fe­male rel­a­tive," and un­suc­cess­ful­ly tried to drink poi­son. In spite of these warn­ing signs of SRPs al­leged­ly abus­ing their pow­er, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­istry sought to dou­ble the re­cruit­ment of SRPs from 5,000 in Au­gust 2012.

SRPs re­ceive less train­ing than po­lice of­fi­cers, but car­ry out many of the same sen­si­tive op­er­a­tions as po­lice of­fi­cers. The warn­ing signs have been there for some time.

Sev­en­teen-year-old Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, was shot by an SRP dur­ing a par­ty at the Mil­i­tary Mu­se­um in Ch­aguara­mas. When wheel­chair-bound Rob­by Ram­char­i­tar was slapped on High Street in San Fer­nan­do–an in­ci­dent record­ed on video–it turned out that his as­sailant was an SRP.

In March this year, a 29-year-old SRP stood ac­cused of rap­ing a 14-year-old girl two-dozen times in less than two years. The dis­con­nect be­tween pow­er and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for too many re­serve of­fi­cers has been clear for al­most a decade now.

Mr Williams' de­ci­sion to halt re­cruit­ment of the pro­gramme sug­gests that he is fi­nal­ly tak­ing the view that enough is enough.

Even In­spec­tor Michael Seales, sec­re­tary of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, a man known to ro­bust­ly de­fend his of­fi­cers, ad­mit­ted that "we have crim­i­nals and drug users un­der the guise of SRPs."

The least we should have is bet­ter stan­dards for all of­fi­cers work­ing in the ser­vice, and de­mand­ing more from re­serve of­fi­cers would be an ex­cel­lent place to start.

As we've called on him to do pre­vi­ous­ly, Mr Williams al­so needs to de­mand high­er stan­dards of be­hav­iour from po­lice of­fi­cers. Af­ter all, the re­serves take their cues from them.

Next should come a re­view of the of­fi­cers now on the SRP pay­roll, an over­due re­ex­am­i­na­tion of those who have been cho­sen to pro­tect and serve, but who may well not be tem­pera­men­tal­ly equipped to do.

They should be let go. Plac­ing weapons in the hands and au­thor­i­ty on the shoul­ders of of­fi­cers of the law should be the last step in a process of screen­ing and train­ing that in­sists on the high­est stan­dards of char­ac­ter and trust from the can­di­dates who of­fer them­selves for ser­vice.