FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Shireen Pol­lard is the Man­ag­er of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence (GBV) Unit, and is one of the civil­ians in the Unit which is staffed with both civil­ians and po­lice of­fi­cers.

She de­scribed gen­der-based vi­o­lence as a “gen­er­al term used to cap­ture any type of vi­o­lence that is root­ed in ex­ploit­ing un­equal pow­er re­la­tion­ships be­tween gen­ders.”

Pol­lard, as one of our Women to Watch in 2023, has de­vot­ed the greater part of her ca­reer build­ing struc­tures and cre­at­ing and en­forc­ing poli­cies for the ben­e­fit of pro­tect­ing women and chil­dren.

Born in Trinidad, she moved to the Unit­ed States at age 13, and lived in New York City un­til she was 32. She holds a Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Po­lice Sci­ence from John Jay Col­lege in New York, and a Mas­ters in So­cial Work from Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty.

With this strong back­ground in crim­i­nal jus­tice and law en­force­ment, she be­gan work­ing for the New York City Ad­min­is­tra­tion for Chil­dren’s Ser­vices as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor. De­scrib­ing this pe­ri­od as one of the high­lights of her ca­reer, she says that work­ing on the re­sponse team, link­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion for Chil­dren’s Ser­vices to the New York Po­lice De­part­ment, was very re­ward­ing, as she was able to help seek re­course for chil­dren who suf­fered from phys­i­cal in­juries or sex­u­al as­sault.

Pol­lard de­cid­ed to move back to T&T five years ago, feel­ing like “I was just go­ing through the rat race in NYC, ver­sus ac­tu­al­ly en­joy­ing my life.”

She al­so was ea­ger to be part of her young nieces and nephew’s lives and spend qual­i­ty time just be­ing around her fam­i­ly. Up­on her re­turn, she worked with­in the Ju­ve­nile Jus­tice Unit at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, which was still in its fledg­ling stages. She then moved on to her present po­si­tion, as Man­ag­er of the TTPS Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence Unit.

Her work at the GBV Unit formed the foun­da­tion of a cru­cial sup­port sys­tem for vic­tims of vi­o­lence, es­pe­cial­ly at a time when re­ports of GBV grew in­creas­ing­ly con­sis­tent, as con­fine­ment to the home dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down led to a cor­re­la­tion of in­creased do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

As a young woman, and a civil­ian in the sys­tem, Pol­lard de­scribed be­ing a civil­ian in the TTPS is a rel­a­tive­ly new con­cept, and she “had to find foot­ing, and make my own path.” She says that al­though she “has not been able to com­plete­ly es­cape the misog­y­ny that ex­ists in the or­ga­ni­za­tion,” she is sur­round­ed by many fe­male first di­vi­sion and high rank­ing of­fi­cers who have al­ways made her feel com­fort­able and cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment of ease in their in­ter­ac­tions.

The Unit was formed in Jan­u­ary 2020, and Pol­lard played a piv­otal role in de­vel­op­ing the pol­i­cy, strat­e­gy and stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures of re­spond­ing to gen­der-based vi­o­lence. The frame­work of the Unit’s de­vel­op­ment recog­nis­es that vic­tims of gen­der-based crimes have to be treat­ed in a dif­fer­ent way than oth­er crimes, which re­quires train­ing of the of­fi­cers.

Her work at the GBV Unit has brought to the fore some of the fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics that show the preva­lence of gen­der-based vi­o­lence. When the unit was formed in 2020, there was a flood of re­ports of GBV, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1000 more of­fences re­port­ed than what was re­port­ed to the TTPS in 2019. In 2022, they saw an in­crease in of­fences, with the main re­ports al­lud­ing to in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence and as­sault by beat­ing.

Pol­lard de­scribes GBV as a “se­ri­ous prob­lem we have to ad­dress in Trinidad, the root is­sue be­ing men’s at­ti­tudes to­wards, and ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women.”

As a plea to men to re­ex­am­ine their prac­tices, she urges them to not fall in­to cul­tur­al prac­tices (for ex­am­ple soot­ing) that have been nor­mal­ized, but to “see women as in­di­vid­u­als on the same lev­el as men, not as pos­ses­sions.”

Al­though Pol­lard’s tenure with the Unit ends at the end of the month, she feels “hap­py and com­fort­able that the Unit is sol­id, and the struc­tures are in place to con­tin­ue to guide.” Her pas­sions con­tin­ue to lead her, as she is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing, work­ing on a project with a US-based foun­da­tion, the In­ter­na­tion­al Le­gal Foun­da­tion, which fo­cus­es on ad­vanc­ing child-friend­ly jus­tice for chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Af­ter she takes some well-de­served rest when she leaves the TTPS fol­low­ing her four-year con­tract, she in­tends to dive back in­to pub­lic work.

Pol­lard is a rare kind of per­son, who is very clear­ly a “do-er”. In­stead of over­think­ing her ideas or dreams, she whole­heart­ed­ly chas­es them. Re­flect­ing on ad­vice of­ten giv­en to women to “dream big,” she shares her per­son­al ethos that dream­ing big is in­suf­fi­cient.

“My ad­vice is to over­come the emo­tions that come with dream­ing big, and just go for it.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the fear and in­se­cu­ri­ties that come with a deep de­sire to pur­sue lofty goals, she en­cour­ages oth­er women to con­tin­ue push­ing the bound­aries of what they can do, and see how far they can go. As she con­tin­ues to work tire­less­ly to pro­tect so­ci­ety’s most vul­ner­a­ble, Shireen Pol­lard re­mains an ex­am­ple of find­ing joy and suc­cess in the ser­vice of oth­ers.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.