AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Al­most one year af­ter T&T record­ed its blood­i­est year with over 600 mur­ders at the end of 2022, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) has lament­ed that the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus was not able to make a dent in crime.

“Over the past year, we have not seen the re­duc­tion in crime that, as a coun­try, we all had hoped to see,” the PolSC said in it 2022 an­nu­al re­port, which was laid in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

The PolSC said there has been a “sig­nif­i­cant de­cline” in the num­ber of peo­ple sat­is­fied with the po­lice in this coun­try, which stood at just eight per cent.

It added that the time had come, “for it to have more mean­ing­ful over­sight of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice”.

In ar­riv­ing at the sug­gest­ed con­clu­sion, the PolSC in­di­cat­ed it was ful­ly cog­nizant of and recog­nised the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has, “the com­plete pow­er to man­age the Po­lice Ser­vice”.

Ex­plain­ing that the rec­om­men­da­tion was not meant to in­ter­fere with the CoP’s man­age­r­i­al role, it ex­plained it was to pro­vide strate­gic sup­port to the Com­mis­sion­er in this re­gard.

The 85-page re­port, which was laid by Deputy Speak­er of the House Es­mond Forde, ex­am­ined the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2022 to De­cem­ber 31, 2022.
The PolSC is head­ed by re­tired

Ap­peal Judge Ju­dith Jones and in­cludes mem­bers Max­ine At­tong, Max­ine King, Se­nior Coun­sel Ra­jiv Per­sad and Ian Kevin Ramd­hanie.

The PolSC said the re­sults of the 2022 Pub­lic Trust Con­fi­dence and Sat­is­fac­tion Sur­vey it con­duct­ed found that fear of crime had in­creased.

This, as 71 per cent of re­spon­dents re­port­ed they were fear­ful or very fear­ful of be­ing phys­i­cal­ly at­tacked/as­sault­ed by a stranger in their com­mu­ni­ty; and 77 per cent said they were fear­ful or very fear­ful of be­ing a vic­tim of rob­bery/home in­va­sion/house­break­ing.

The com­mis­sion re­port­ed, “A fur­ther 73 per cent of re­spon­dents said they felt un­safe or very un­safe leav­ing the en­try and ex­it doors open when they were home.

“More­over, the sur­vey found that on­ly 8 per cent of re­spon­dents were sat­is­fied or very sat­is­fied with the job po­lice are do­ing in this coun­try.”

This, the PolSC claimed, rep­re­sent­ed, “a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline from the 48 per­cent who were sat­is­fied with the job be­ing done by the Po­lice in 2003 and is a far cry from the 60 per­cent who felt safe or fair­ly safe walk­ing alone in their neigh­bour­hood at night”.

It ac­knowl­edged that while crime was not a one-fix prob­lem and re­quired in­ter­ven­tion at many lev­els, they be­lieved “one of the ways to im­prove the present sit­u­a­tion is to cre­ate a more ef­fec­tive over­sight body which pro­vides struc­tured as­sis­tance to the Com­mis­sion­er in the man­age­ment of the Po­lice Ser­vice”.

“This re­quires giv­ing the com­mis­sion the abil­i­ty to be more ef­fec­tive in its ex­ist­ing man­date, in­crease the man­ner in which it can pro­vide as­sis­tance to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the pro­vi­sion of ad­e­quate staffing for the com­mis­sion to prop­er­ly dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”

It added, “With re­spect to its ex­ist­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice, the com­mis­sion recog­nis­es that, ide­al­ly, a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice should be ap­point­ed from among the ranks of the Ser­vice.”

This, it said, would pro­vide a pro­mo­tion­al path for ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cers, strength­ened the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and in­creased morale.

Re­gard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment that the cri­te­ria for the ap­point­ment of peo­ple to the top of­fices of the TTPS be pre­scribed by Or­der of the Pres­i­dent, the PolSC stat­ed, “In the com­mis­sion’s opin­ion, how­ev­er, it ought to be con­sult­ed on the cri­te­ria to be ap­plied for ap­point­ment to these of­fices.”

It al­so pro­posed that the re­tire­ment age for the of­fice of CoP be ex­tend­ed from 60 to 65 years – al­low­ing for the con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice of peo­ple hold­ing the post – and that ap­point­ments to the PolSC should be for a min­i­mum of five years, as it would al­low for sta­bil­i­ty, es­tab­lish con­ti­nu­ity with on­go­ing ini­tia­tives and al­low the com­mis­sion suf­fi­cient time to build bet­ter re­la­tion­ships with its stake­hold­ers.