Of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion can so eas­i­ly miss the mark! This week, a po­lice of­fi­cer with a high­er call­ing from God spoke his truth to polic­ing. With the flair of a sea­soned preach­er, he con­vinced us that he’d missed his re­al pro­fes­sion as he pon­tif­i­cat­ed about the con­se­quence of choos­ing to “speed off “dur­ing a po­lice road­block ex­er­cise be­cause you have “noth­ing” in your ve­hi­cle. In a cap­ti­vat­ing video, he preached about an er­rant mo­torist with­out in­sur­ance. Said he, “Les­son learn, the wrong po­lice stop all yuh. They would shoot first, and then if all yuh have noth­ing, they would put some­thing on all yuh.”

There is a lo­cal say­ing, “mouth open, sto­ry jump out”. The Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion de­scribed the Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple’s sto­ry as not re­flect­ing what is hap­pen­ing in the Po­lice Ser­vice. Morals of that sto­ry? First, if you get a call di­rect­ly from God, it’s wise to ren­der your ser­vice un­to God, as law en­force­ment T&T style is not your call­ing, lest your peers ac­cuse you of ly­ing or un­veil­ing crimes against in­no­cent cit­i­zens. Sec­ond, de­nials don’t make the truth go away.

An­oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ure of the past week oc­curred af­ter the dead­ly ac­ci­dent at the Guapo round­about on the new high­way to Point Fortin. Mo­torists said be­cause there are no lights and signs at the round­about, they of­ten have to mash their brakes abrupt­ly; it is dif­fi­cult to see the round­about un­til it is too late. Some have said it is a death trap.

The Point Fortin MP re­spond­ed that the high­way “was built to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards” … and that “it is on­ly a death trap if you are there at some se­ri­ous speed”. Se­ri­ous! He ac­knowl­edged that the round­about was “tem­po­rary, as work con­tin­ues on a por­tion that has to cross gas lines”. He con­ced­ed that ef­forts were nec­es­sary to make the road net­work safe. Was there ev­i­dence the dri­vers were speed­ing? Any­where else, law­suits would be fly­ing across that high­way.

Poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion has wreaked hav­oc with the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment. Some peo­ple near­ly had a heart at­tack when they re­ceived wicked Prop­er­ty Tax no­tices on the rental val­ue of their prop­er­ties. Imag­ine get­ting a no­tice stat­ing the rental val­ue of your prop­er­ty is $71,000. The Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion prob­a­bly felt that it was the prop­er­ty own­er’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to know the pre­cise for­mu­la to cal­cu­late their pay­ments based on the rental val­ue. Oth­ers don’t know how they ar­rived at the val­u­a­tion and right­ly want to know. That in­for­ma­tion may be on a web­site, in the bud­get state­ment, or pub­lished in the me­dia, but the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion ig­nored the ba­sic tenets of re­spect­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Prop­er­ty own­ers cut across all de­mo­graph­ics, in­clud­ing age and ed­u­ca­tion. How were they to know with­out spe­cif­ic de­tails in the val­u­a­tion no­tices? Why are tax­pay­ers pay­ing for a Gov­ern­ment Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit?

In an­oth­er sce­nario, a re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion wants to break down an unau­tho­rised se­cu­ri­ty booth. That is their right. No re­spon­si­ble per­son would ad­vo­cate law­break­ing. But let us sup­pose that the Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­ers in­tend to en­force the law just­ly. In that case, they must com­mu­ni­cate their in­ten­tion to break down all the il­le­gal vend­ing booths and struc­tures un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, in­clud­ing un­kempt and il­le­gal bill­boards. Tell us when the cor­po­ra­tion and oth­ers last ac­count­ed for mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars un­der the Ex­che­quer’s law. Did they break that law? Tell us who al­lowed il­le­gal dwellings and oth­er struc­tures against the Beetham High­way berm and whether that area’s cor­po­ra­tion will break those down.

The in­jus­tice per­pe­trat­ed on so­ci­ety by of­fi­cial­dom is un­con­scionable.

What is the fore­most prob­lem af­fect­ing cit­i­zens—crime? The Gov­ern­ment says it is not re­spon­si­ble for se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions and strat­e­gy and that par­ents must ful­fil their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. And the Po­lice Ser­vice says it can’t fight crime alone. But who is ac­count­able for the dis­mal de­tec­tion rate? Crime ris­es when there are low de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion rates. And the vi­o­lent rob­bers say their “job” is rob­bery. So, how should we in­ter­pret the com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Who is re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens?

The suc­cess of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy is con­tin­gent on it be­ing linked to vi­able poli­cies and strate­gies to build cred­i­bil­i­ty, re­spect, and pub­lic con­fi­dence. These val­ues have lit­tle to do with how many roads, health cen­tres, low-cost hous­es, so­cial grants, schools and all those good things the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides. No in­sti­tu­tion can please every­one in a het­ero­ge­neous and po­lit­i­cal­ly po­larised so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, pro­ject­ing a holis­tic vi­sion and strate­gies via an ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, one that em­bod­ies re­spect, so­cial jus­tice, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the very di­ver­si­ty of so­ci­ety and to which peo­ple can re­late, will go a long way to­wards re­as­sur­ing the elec­torate that we are in ca­pa­ble hands.