Some be­lieve that I have a per­son­al prob­lem with Roger Alexan­der.

Quite the con­trary.

Many se­nior of­fi­cers sim­ply did not like him, and were even up­set when I pro­mot­ed him and lat­er al­lowed him to re­main on a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion talk show, as I be­lieved it brought val­ue to the TTPS.

As a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, I gen­uine­ly hope that he im­proves his per­for­mance and suc­ceeds in his cur­rent role. How­ev­er, that does not mean I will turn a blind eye when I see is­sues, poli­cies, or pub­lic state­ments that are mis­guid­ed, dam­ag­ing, or fun­da­men­tal­ly in­cor­rect.

The lat­est ex­am­ple in­volves his sweep­ing pub­lic at­tack on the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, de­scrib­ing it as be­ing “rot­ten to the core.”

For a line min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Im­mi­gra­tion to make such a state­ment demon­strates a com­plete lack of un­der­stand­ing of lead­er­ship, morale man­age­ment, and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

A leader’s role is to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es, en­force dis­ci­pline where nec­es­sary, and im­prove stan­dards, not reck­less­ly de­stroy the rep­u­ta­tion of an en­tire de­part­ment with one broad and in­flam­ma­to­ry state­ment.

His com­ments have un­fair­ly tar­nished every Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer in the coun­try. Thou­sands of of­fi­cers now find them­selves as­so­ci­at­ed with cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct be­cause of an ir­re­spon­si­ble blan­ket ac­cu­sa­tion made by the very min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for their port­fo­lio. He owes the hard­work­ing of­fi­cers of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion an apol­o­gy.

No law en­force­ment agency is per­fect. Every in­sti­tu­tion may have rogue el­e­ments.

How­ev­er, re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship re­quires sep­a­rat­ing the guilty from the in­no­cent, not con­demn­ing an en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The TTPS charges po­lice of­fi­cers reg­u­lar­ly for crim­i­nal of­fences when ev­i­dence ex­ists. Yet you can be as­sured that Roger Alexan­der would nev­er pub­licly de­scribe the TTPS as “rot­ten to the core,” and right­ly so. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his bias aris­ing from his own in­sti­tu­tion­al back­ground must now be ad­dressed.

His com­ments re­flect a lack of ex­po­sure, train­ing, and ex­pe­ri­ence in se­nior lead­er­ship and man­age­ment.

State­ments made from emo­tion, hearsay, and frus­tra­tion, rather than log­ic, ev­i­dence, and strate­gic lead­er­ship, can se­vere­ly dam­age morale, in­sti­tu­tion­al con­fi­dence, and pub­lic trust in the very de­part­ment he is ex­pect­ed to lead and strength­en.

Fur­ther, his state­ment was op­er­a­tional­ly reck­less.

If there are ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der­way, what was the val­ue in pub­licly alert­ing po­ten­tial of­fend­ers be­fore ar­rests or charges are laid? And if the de­part­ment is tru­ly “rot­ten to the core,” as he claims, then iden­ti­fy those in­volved, pro­vide the ev­i­dence, and have them ar­rest­ed and charged.

You can­not pub­licly con­demn an en­tire in­sti­tu­tion based on ru­mour, hearsay, old talk, and pub­lic spec­u­la­tion.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he now ap­pears to be go­ing down the same road as Fitzie (Fitzger­ald) Hinds, who made equal­ly reck­less al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing firearm cor­rup­tion and false claims about firearms be­ing ap­proved for con­ver­sion in­to au­to­mat­ic weapons.

Those claims ul­ti­mate­ly col­lapsed un­der scruti­ny. Five years lat­er, not one po­lice of­fi­cer was charged for bribery aris­ing from the al­le­ga­tions re­peat­ed­ly ref­er­enced from that au­dit re­port, much of which was sim­i­lar­ly built on hearsay, spec­u­la­tion, and un­sup­port­ed as­ser­tions.

If in­di­vid­u­als have bro­ken the law, then charge them and clean up the de­part­ment.

But do not make wild and sweep­ing ac­cu­sa­tions about an in­sti­tu­tion be­ing “rot­ten to the core” when no names have been called, no charges have been laid, and no ev­i­dence has been pub­licly pre­sent­ed.

To say that he is now dis­play­ing some of the same ten­den­cies as Hinds may sound harsh, but some­times the truth is un­com­fort­able.

He can do bet­ter.

Gary Grif­fith

Via email