Geisha Kow­lessar

He's al­ready bought his one-way tick­et to Cana­da, and yes­ter­day Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewats­ki took part in his last ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing. His res­ig­na­tion takes ef­fect next Mon­day. In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, in his of­fice on the first floor of the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing in Port-of-Spain, Ewats­ki re­vealed how he felt about leav­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"I have mixed feel­ings about leav­ing. I am sad­dened in one re­spect. This isn't what I an­tic­i­pat­ed when I signed on for this role. I an­tic­i­pat­ed con­tin­u­ing to ful­fil my con­tract over the three years. "How­ev­er, all things be­ing con­sid­ered, I felt this was the right de­ci­sion for me, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly."

On Mon­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that Ewats­ki and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs had re­signed. But there has been much scep­ti­cism from var­i­ous quar­ters, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion, over whether the de­ci­sion by the Cana­di­an top cops was vol­un­tary or forced. "The rea­sons for re­sign­ing are per­son­al and there have been many as­pects, many com­po­nents to those rea­sons," Ewats­ki said.

"I gave it a very long, in­volved thought be­fore I made this de­ci­sion. I re­spect the opin­ions of peo­ple, and I don't let one thing in par­tic­u­lar be the in­flu­encer in mak­ing de­ci­sions such as this de­ci­sion I have made." His thoughts about re­sign­ing have been "fair­ly re­cent," oc­cu­py­ing his mind with­in the "last cou­ple of weeks," he added.

On whether he was forced, bul­lied or co­erced to re­sign, Ewats­ki dis­pelled those sug­ges­tions, in­sist­ing, "This was my de­ci­sion...that's the truth. It's my de­ci­sion." He al­so de­clined to com­ment on whether he was bought out by the Gov­ern­ment. Ewats­ki and Gibbs took up their posts on Sep­tem­ber 20, 2010. Their res­ig­na­tion let­ters were dat­ed Ju­ly 26, 2012, just over a month shy of meet­ing their two-year mark.

Of his time in of­fice, Ewats­ki says it was "very in­ter­est­ing." "It's been very chal­leng­ing, re­ward­ing...It has been an eye-open­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in some re­spects," he said. "It has al­lowed me to re­in­force my own thoughts about polic­ing and the whole pro­fes­sion of polic­ing. It's been a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for me, it's been a per­son­al growth ex­pe­ri­ence for me. So it's been a very in­ter­est­ing two years here in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

But Ewats­ki ad­mit­ted that his role as a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer has been try­ing at times, as change, es­pe­cial­ly in po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tions, has been dif­fi­cult to at­tain. "I don't think there is any dis­put­ing the fact that when you try to make change in an or­gan­i­sa­tion, that is dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly in polic­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions," he said.

"Polic­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are very dif­fi­cult to change. Po­lice of­fi­cers for the most part are very con­ser­v­a­tive. They fol­low guide­lines, rules and reg­u­la­tions and to change...it's some­times been very dif­fi­cult. "That is prob­a­bly one of the most chal­leng­ing as­pects in terms of get­ting peo­ple to un­der­stand the need to change and why change would ac­tu­al­ly im­prove their abil­i­ty to per­form the ser­vice that they need to pro­vide to the cit­i­zens."

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Ewats­ki has faced crit­i­cism from the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion over his man­age­r­i­al skills and the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive, which the as­so­ci­a­tion has brand­ed as a fail­ure. But while crit­i­cism has served to make him more res­olute to get the job done, Ewats­ki said he was not blind to the fact that there were some with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice who did not sup­port his ap­point­ment.

"I won't call it hos­til­i­ty, but again, I know there are peo­ple who are re­sis­tant to change," he said. "There have been peo­ple right from the time of my ap­point­ment who would pre­fer not to have me ap­point­ed...maybe not me per­son­al­ly, but a for­eign­er com­ing in. I am cer­tain­ly aware of that."

Be­ing a white man at the top lev­el of a pre­dom­i­nate­ly black or­gan­i­sa­tion was not an is­sue, Ewats­ki said, as he did not ex­pe­ri­ence any neg­a­tiv­i­ty over race. Ques­tioned on his re­la­tion­ship with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, he replied: "My re­la­tion­ship with a per­son in that po­si­tion over my ca­reer has al­ways been one of re­spect for the of­fice, re­spect for the po­si­tion."

Fi­nal ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing

Ewats­ki's last meet­ing with oth­er mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive of the Po­lice Ser­vice took place at 8 am yes­ter­day. In­stead of a for­mal set­ting, the dis­cus­sions were frank and one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions, Ewats­ki said. "I told them that I hoped that I have brought val­ue to the TTPS and to them per­son­al­ly, in terms of their roles, and to me that is im­por­tant.

"They agreed my time here was valu­able to them per­son­al­ly. "I have learned lots and I think they have learned lots, we all shared lots, and I know many of the peo­ple I spoke to were very ap­pre­cia­tive of that, and to me that's very grat­i­fy­ing." Al­though he served as a deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er, he al­so came in­to con­tact with low­er ranks and made friend­ships there, in­clud­ing some with po­lice con­sta­bles.

"One of­fi­cer in par­tic­u­lar said the way in which I treat­ed the of­fi­cers was very dif­fer­ent than what they were used to, and he said that in a pos­i­tive man­ner," Ewats­ki said. "I told him I am very hap­py to hear that, be­cause I think in this day and age of lead­er­ship, you need to have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, and just be­cause you have a cer­tain role or a cer­tain po­si­tion, that you should not fol­low blind­ly. "That doesn't cut it any more, whether it be po­lice or any­where else."

Ewats­ki: 21st-cen­tu­ry ini­tia­tive will mod­ernise Po­lice Ser­vice

When launched in West­ern Di­vi­sion on April 4 last year, the 21st-cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive got a neg­a­tive re­cep­tion both from of­fi­cers of that di­vi­sion and from the as­so­ci­a­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent Sgt Anand Rame­sar tried to have the project stopped, by fil­ing an in­junc­tion at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

It was thrown out by the court's pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, but the court nev­er­the­less said the project might be il­le­gal, as the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) was not brought in when the terms and con­di­tions of the project were be­ing draft­ed. New­ly-ap­point­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has open­ly said he does not sup­port the ini­tia­tive, es­pe­cial­ly as it en­tailed clos­ing sta­tions.

But Ewats­ki re­mains adamant that the ini­tia­tive was work­ing suc­cess­ful­ly. For one thing, it made po­lice more vis­i­ble-a change that Warn­er has al­so called for. "My sup­port from the trans­for­ma­tion through the ini­tia­tive is I know that it is a polic­ing mod­el that is used uni­ver­sal­ly and it works...There are grow­ing pains, there are teething pains, there are prob­lems with any type of change," he said.

"But that mod­el ad­dress­es and meets the goals of what we all want:?high­er po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty, more re­spon­sive­ness to the pub­lic, height­en­ing the lev­el of pub­lic and po­lice in­ter­ac­tion in a pos­i­tive man­ner and pro­vid­ing a bet­ter sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. How you go about do­ing it...ob­vi­ous­ly there are dif­fer­ences." Ewats­ki ex­pressed hope that the con­cept of the ini­tia­tive would re­main in­tact.

What was achieved?

A dif­fer­ent style of lead­er­ship is what Ewats­ki said he has brought to the Po­lice Ser­vice. "This is mod­el­ling the be­hav­iour that I tru­ly be­lieve how po­lice lead­ers need to be­have," he said. "When you're put in lead­er­ship in polic­ing, it's a very huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. You have to en­sure that not on­ly are you a good man­ag­er, but you have to en­sure that you in­ter­act with peo­ple at all lev­els, you need to treat peo­ple with re­spect, with dig­ni­ty, in­creas­ing their con­fi­dence and help­ing them be­come bet­ter lead­ers.

"I am hop­ing that my style of lead­er­ship would help in the de­vel­op­ment of the TTPS." Some of the changes he has made in­clude re­vamp­ing the E999 sys­tem and for­mu­lat­ing a road-safe­ty plan, which have placed the Po­lice Ser­vice on the right foot­ing to make it more mod­ern, Ewats­ki said.

What's next for Ewats­ki

When he first took up the job, he was ex­cit­ed and hum­bled, he said. As the months pro­gressed and the job be­came more chal­leng­ing, Ewats­ki said his pas­sion for work­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mained un­changed. "I am in a stage in my life where I don't al­low bit­ter­ness to play a role," he said. "I think that comes with ex­pe­ri­ence, with ma­tu­ri­ty, it comes with get­ting to a point in your life when you re­alise that spend­ing time be­ing bit­ter over some­thing is re­al­ly a waste of time."

Asked whether he would re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ewats­ki said he has forged many friend­ships, and he would re­main a loy­al friend to the coun­try. What's next for Jack Ewats­ki? "I am go­ing to go back to Cana­da, back home to my fam­i­ly and friends...and I will see where life takes me."