Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith on Wednes­day re­vealed a draft plan to re­struc­ture of the TTPS, more specif­i­cal­ly the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit (OCIU).

Al­though the an­nounce­ment of the unit’s re­struc­tur­ing came af­ter a failed raid on reg­gae icon Bu­ju Ban­ton’s ho­tel room last Sat­ur­day, Grif­fith said the de­ci­sion was not a knee-jerk re­ac­tion.

“I have spo­ken at length that I in­tend to have in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing,” he said, adding that the draft plan was sub­ject to change and ap­proval.

The Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau (CIB), is pro­posed to be the ser­vice’s pri­ma­ry in­tel­li­gence unit which was pre­vi­ous­ly the OCIU. The pro­posed CIB would have with­in it, ded­i­cat­ed de­part­ments to treat with dai­ly in­tel­li­gence re­ports, il­le­gal firearms, il­le­gal sub­stances, crim­i­nal gang in­tel­li­gence, and covert in­tel­li­gence.

“This is based on im­mense re­search, look­ing at what we’ve seen from best prac­tice and look­ing at our own threats, our own needs to en­sure our in­tel­li­gence unit can be stream­lined to en­sure max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy,” Grif­fith said.

The il­le­gal firearms de­part­ment is sim­i­lar to the Al­co­hol, To­bac­co and Firearms (ATF) de­part­ment in the US and the Il­le­gal Sub­stances de­part­ment that of the Drug En­force­ment Agency (DEA) in the US, he said.

A Crim­i­nal Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit would be formed to treat with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al gangs.

With these changes, Grif­fith sug­gests that civil­ians would now be em­ployed to per­form ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tions. This, he said, would al­low for more po­lice of­fi­cers to be on the streets polic­ing.

“In mod­ern polic­ing, what we want is to have po­lice of­fi­cers out there do­ing polic­ing and not deal­ing with ad­min­is­tra­tive work,” he ex­plained.

“This is done world­wide. You have civil­ians deal­ing with spe­cif­ic ad­min­is­tra­tive, lo­gis­tic, and fi­nan­cial mat­ters so you could have po­lice of­fi­cers out do­ing polic­ing.”

He said they “do not need to in­crease quan­ti­ty, we need to en­hance qual­i­ty” and this re­struc­tur­ing would stream­line the po­lice ser­vice to have bet­ter sys­tems.

Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion

cau­tious of changes

TTPS Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ASP Michael Seales said he does not be­lieve there would be any is­sues with po­lice work­ing along­side civil­ians who are pro­posed to take up ad­min­is­tra­tive roles in the TTPS to al­low for the in­creased avail­abil­i­ty of of­fi­cers to po­lice the streets.

But he said there is some un­cer­tain­ty when it comes to the po­si­tion of Chief of Staff, which would be held by a civil­ian.

“Let’s just use the ex­am­ple of the man­age­ment of pro­mo­tions, the man­age­ment of va­ca­tion leave, the man­age­ment of sick leave which ac­tu­al­ly im­pacts on the avail­able man­pow­er is now left to the civil­ian head to man­age. The op­er­a­tional­is­ing of that is some­thing of a grey area.”

He al­so said they would have to wait and see the im­pacts of change man­age­ment.

Asked about the cre­ation of the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau (CIB), Seales said: “We un­der­stand what the Com­mis­sion­er is try­ing to do. What it would lead to is spe­cial­i­sa­tion in terms of each per­son hav­ing a spe­cial­ist skill…which works well.”

The ques­tion for the as­so­ci­a­tion, he said, how­ev­er, is how well would it fuse to­geth­er.

“What the as­so­ci­a­tion has recog­nised by way of re­search is that they are all one and the same (dif­fer­ent crimes) be­cause the gangs get in­volved in firearms trade, the nar­cotics trade, the hu­man traf­fick­ing trade - it’s a ques­tion of op­por­tu­ni­ty for the gangs and the tak­ing ad­van­tage of the crim­i­nal op­por­tu­ni­ties. So I think that is what has to mir­ror now what the Com­mis­sion­er is do­ing.”

Seales said that when the of­fi­cers are com­part­men­talised, “when you would have had a one-stop shop that would have treat­ed with the whole ques­tion of gang ac­tiv­i­ties, you are now sep­a­rat­ing it out for it to be a re­sponse to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and try to make things bet­ter.”

He urges that the CIB must be avail­able for the en­tire Po­lice Ser­vice not just for a spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple.