Shal­iza Has­sanali

Se­nior Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Sev­en years af­ter a per­for­mance as­sess­ment on the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad (PLS) rec­om­mend­ed ex­pan­sion of the unit to en­hance food se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in T&T, there is still a lack of of­fi­cers and re­sources.

This has left farm­ers at the mer­cy of crim­i­nals.

The 2016 per­for­mance as­sess­ment stat­ed that prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a de­ter­rent to agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties and that for years farm­ers have been re­port­ing loss­es that have been af­fect­ing their pro­duc­tion and cut­ting in­to their prof­it.

The re­port–which fo­cused on the squad’s de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion rates, as well as pa­trols, sick leave, job sat­is­fac­tion, vis­its to farms, cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and strate­gies to fight prae­di­al lar­ce­ny for the pe­ri­od 2014/2015–was draft­ed by the Of­fice of Law En­force­ment Pol­i­cy (OLEP). It out­lined 44 rec­om­men­da­tions for the PLS, but se­nior of­fi­cers could not say if any of these have been im­ple­ment­ed sev­en years lat­er.

In March 2013 Cab­i­net agreed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the PLS to op­er­ate in the east­ern, north­ern, cen­tral and south­ern di­vi­sions. To­day, the of­fi­cers op­er­ate from on­ly two sta­tions–North/East and South/Cen­tral.

While the re­port iden­ti­fied 36 hotspot ar­eas for prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, it not­ed that coun­ty Ca­roni had the high­est in­ci­dence of thefts then.

The re­port showed that nine years ago, in 2014, the of­fi­cers made 3,431 pa­trols, while in 2015, they record­ed 2,596 pa­trols. The re­duc­tion in pa­trols, the re­port stat­ed, was like­ly due to a de­ple­tion of man­pow­er.

The Sun­day Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that the PLS had a com­ple­ment of 84 con­sta­bles, 14 cor­po­rals, five sergeants, two in­spec­tors, one ASP, one su­per­in­ten­dent, a civil­ian co­or­di­na­tor, and eight cler­i­cal staff when it be­gan op­er­a­tions a decade ago.

That fig­ure has dwin­dled to 28 con­sta­bles, three cor­po­rals, two sergeants, one ASP, and one su­per­in­ten­dent to date.

There is no civil­ian co­or­di­na­tor or in­spec­tor while the cler­i­cal staff has been re­duced to one.

The re­port not­ed an­oth­er hin­drance was the im­mo­bil­i­sa­tion of of­fi­cers and sug­gest­ed they im­ple­ment a ro­bust fleet man­age­ment sys­tem to pre­vent the en­tire fleet from be­ing crip­pled at any giv­en time.

From 2013 to 2015, the PLS utilised 12 ve­hi­cles–eight of which were leased by the Gov­ern­ment. In 2016, eight Navara ve­hi­cles were hand­ed over to the unit, and the leased ve­hi­cles re­turned.

At present, the of­fi­cers utilise on­ly two ve­hi­cles to con­duct pa­trols and re­spond to re­ports af­ter be­ing im­mo­bile for al­most two years.

Of the 302 prae­di­al lar­ce­ny re­ports record­ed in 2014, 169 were de­tect­ed, while 112 of the 204 re­ports made in 2015 were de­tect­ed, the re­port stat­ed. The PLS ob­tained an av­er­age de­ten­tion rate of 55 per cent in both years. They were al­so cred­it­ed for record­ing a con­vic­tion rate of 89 per cent in 2014 and 60 per cent in 2015.

The re­port found that a to­tal of 54 of­fi­cers were re­spon­si­ble for 575 days lost to sick leave in 2014, while 68 of­fi­cers took a to­tal of 738 days of sick leave the fol­low­ing year.

“Hav­ing re­viewed the fig­ures, the ques­tion aris­es as to whether there is a sit­u­a­tion caus­ing the of­fi­cers’ health to be­come com­pro­mised. There al­so ex­ists the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an abuse of sick leave oc­cur­ring with­in the squad,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port ad­vised that re­me­di­al ac­tion be tak­en to ad­dress this prob­lem.

“There al­so ap­pears to be some chal­lenges re­gard­ing the cur­rent lev­el of both hu­man and phys­i­cal re­sources avail­able to the squad. More than half of the of­fi­cers in­di­cat­ed that their su­pe­ri­ors were not co­op­er­a­tive in grant­i­ng time off to deal with is­sues of stress, burnouts, and per­son­al sit­u­a­tions.”

In as­sess­ing eight ar­eas of per­for­mance, the PLS re­ceived five “good” grades, two “fair” grades, and “one” ex­cel­lent grade.

“This sug­gests that the squad has at­tained an over­all pass­ing grade in terms of its gen­er­al per­for­mance. It is the con­sid­ered opin­ion of OLEP, hav­ing con­duct­ed this as­sess­ment that the PLS should be re­tained and ex­pand­ed fol­low­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate needs as­sess­ment. The PLS is well-placed to en­hance food se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in our coun­try,” the re­port stat­ed.

Rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ed–The re­cruit­ment of ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers in an ef­fort to bring the squad to its sanc­tioned strength; the es­tab­lish­ment of an an­nu­al per­for­mance mea­sure­ment sys­tem; and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a ro­bust fleet man­age­ment sys­tem; com­mis­sion a needs as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine whether there are de­fi­cien­cies in the squad’s phys­i­cal re­sources; in­crease com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ments; ap­point a le­gal ad­vis­er to pro­vide sound ad­vice and guid­ance in the pros­e­cu­tion of of­fend­ers; es­tab­lish a health and well­ness pro­gramme with­in the PLS; and set year­ly per­for­mance tar­gets in terms of charges and con­vic­tions.

Se­nior of­fi­cer can’t say if any of the rec­om­men­da­tions im­ple­ment­ed

On Fri­day, the Sun­day Guardian reached out to the head of the PLS su­per­in­ten­dent Murchin­son Alex­is query­ing if the unit had no­ticed a spate of rob­beries in­volv­ing farm­ers in Cen­tral.

How­ev­er, Alex­is said he was en­gaged in a meet­ing and passed his phone to as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent Bri­an Bruce, his sec­ond in com­mand. Asked if any of the rec­om­men­da­tions in the PLS 2016 per­for­mance as­sess­ment re­port were im­ple­ment­ed, Bruce in­di­cat­ed that he could not say. He ad­vised that all our ques­tions be re­ferred to Brent Zephyrine at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment.

Ques­tions were What­sApped to Zepyhrine who re­spond­ed yes­ter­day, stat­ing that he will “work on so­lic­it­ing a re­sponse soon­est.”