Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin is ques­tion­ing the find­ings of a Guardian Me­dia-com­mis­sioned opin­ion poll on his per­for­mance. He does not un­der­stand how da­ta that shows 46 per cent of peo­ple grad­ing his per­for­mance as av­er­age could be de­scribed as “be­low par.”

“Sev­en­teen per cent in Trinidad say­ing that he’s do­ing a good job, at least if you put 46 and 17 you go­ing to have a well over 62 or more per cent say­ing that the com­mis­sion­er is do­ing an av­er­age and a good job and that to me is by far a pass­ing grade,” Ben­jamin stat­ed.

Ben­jamin said the sta­tis­tics com­piled by Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany showed that 43 per cent felt he was do­ing an av­er­age job, 25 per cent said his per­for­mance was good, and ten per cent found he was do­ing a very good job.

He as­sert­ed that in no way could 78 per cent of pos­i­tive re­spons­es in To­ba­go be de­scribed as sub­par.

“These things af­fect the per­for­mance and how peo­ple per­ceive the po­lice ser­vice and I’m say­ing that we should re­al­ly be a bit fair,” he said.

Al­though he took up the act­ing po­si­tion less than three months ago, Ben­jamin said he and his team had de­vel­oped op­er­a­tional and strate­gic plans and opened two new po­lice sta­tions.

“I am say­ing if by do­ing that with­in such a short space of time, if that’s be­low par, I am say­ing I am re­al­ly, re­al­ly, tak­en aback ... the facts it­self is right in front our face,” he said.

In the poll, which was con­duct­ed be­tween April 10 and 13, Ghany ques­tioned 1,650 re­spon­dents in 11 mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in Trinidad and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 peo­ple in To­ba­go.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah not­ed that opin­ions shift with the wind.

He told Ben­jamin: “Your man­date is not writ­ten by pop­u­lar­i­ty—it is carved out in du­ty, in ser­vice, and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the coun­try.

“Crime is not mere­ly a sta­tis­tics game. It is a fight for the soul of the na­tion.”

Heer­ah said the State of Emer­gency was nev­er in­tend­ed to be a crime-fight­ing tool in it­self, but a strate­gic ini­tia­tive.

“This re­quired not just boots on the ground, but brains be­hind the badge,” he said.

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera be­lieves more than 90 per cent of the ef­forts the po­lice ex­pend­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od could have been done with­out call­ing a SoE.

“All they did dur­ing the SoE was cri­sis polic­ing and oth­er than that round­ing up per­sons with de­ten­tion or­ders to in­car­cer­ate them, the ma­jor­i­ty of whom has since been freed with­out charges,” he said.

Figuera al­so ques­tioned the an­nounce­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tion date dur­ing the SoE.

“This was to pre-empt an out­break of vi­o­lence that would have harmed an elec­tion cam­paign,” he said.