Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Past and present stake­hold­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem agree that Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has per­formed well dur­ing his first 100 days in of­fice as head of the TTPS and are hope­ful that he can main­tain this mo­men­tum through­out his three-year term.

Gue­var­ro was ap­point­ed as this coun­try’s 24th Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in June af­ter gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion MPs unan­i­mous­ly agreed on his se­lec­tion dur­ing a sit­ting of the Low­er House.

Gue­var­ro, 49, pre­vi­ous­ly served as head of the Spe­cial Branch, a po­lice unit as­signed to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty to high-lev­el of­fi­cials and dig­ni­taries (in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter) and ma­jor in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der said he was pleased with Gue­var­ro’s per­for­mance in lead­ing the TTPS thus far and praised him for his proac­tive ap­proach to crime sup­pres­sion.

Alexan­der: He has

ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions

Alexan­der, who served in sev­er­al op­er­a­tional units in the TTPS, praised Gue­var­ro’s hands-on ap­proach to lead­er­ship, not­ing that he of­ten works along­side of­fi­cers in the field and at crime scenes.

Dur­ing the Ju­ly res­cue of kid­nap vic­tim Jankie Sati Karim in Ba­lan­dra, Gue­var­ro and se­nior of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the scene the same night and briefed re­porters on the suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion.

He said Gue­var­ro had ex­ceed­ed his ex­pec­ta­tions and that he was ready to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing his ef­forts in his role as a key pol­i­cy­mak­er.

“I wouldn’t give him an A+; I would grade him a mas­ter’s de­gree for his work so far ... His think­ing, his strate­gies, and his abil­i­ty to mo­ti­vate are in line, as I would put it, strate­gi­cal­ly in this war on crime.”

While Gue­var­ro may not have been as wide­ly known as oth­er se­nior of­fi­cers, Alexan­der said he should have been ap­point­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er years ago and en­cour­aged all of­fi­cers to sup­port him. Re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism that Gue­var­ro might not ful­ly grasp every as­pect of polic­ing, Alexan­der not­ed it is un­re­al­is­tic for one per­son to mas­ter every op­er­a­tional and ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ty in such a large in­sti­tu­tion.

When asked if he had any sug­ges­tions for Gue­var­ro as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Alexan­der said that while many young of­fi­cers were be­ing pro­mot­ed, he urged the top cop to en­cour­age prop­er men­tor­ship and guid­ance so that they could have a more prac­ti­cal un­der­stand­ing of what was re­quired of them.

“In­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge must be dis­played by the suc­cess of the in­sti­tu­tion, mean­ing in terms of court mat­ters and case man­age­ment, prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions must be dis­played, and I am will­ing to bring peo­ple or send peo­ple wher­ev­er it may deem nec­es­sary to up­lift the ser­vice. But, for me, Mr Gue­var­ro, out of ten, I would give him one mil­lion and ten.”

De­vesh: He is tak­ing the

job very se­ri­ous­ly

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj de­scribed Gue­var­ro’s record as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er thus far as “com­mend­able”, not­ing that while he did not have the ex­act fig­ures avail­able, there ap­peared to be a de­crease in ma­jor crimes since he be­gan his tenure.

“He is tak­ing the job very se­ri­ous­ly, from what I have seen. Re­mem­ber, he is the one who rec­om­mend­ed the lat­est State of Emer­gency, and we have seen a dra­mat­ic de­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and se­ri­ous crimes, so I think he act­ed on his in­tel­li­gence re­ports, and the Gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed what he had to say.

“From what I can see ... as I said, I don’t have on hand the sta­tis­tics, but I note he has done a lit­tle change-up in the head of the Po­lice Ser­vice, and it is said to be geared to­wards ef­fi­cien­cy.

Dick­son: His ap­proach is

re­fresh­ing and em­pow­er­ing

Pres­i­dent of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion act­ing ASP Gideon Dick­son said he was al­so sat­is­fied with Gue­var­ro’s lead­er­ship style thus far, not­ing that it not on­ly added to trans­paren­cy in the or­gan­i­sa­tion but al­so en­hanced dai­ly work­flows as well.

“We are see­ing it yield in all op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties and in­ter­nal process­es, so we look for­ward to work­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”

When asked if he had any con­struc­tive crit­i­cism or sug­ges­tions for Gue­var­ro, Dick­son said he was un­able to pro­vide any such in­put, as he nev­er served as po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­fore.

He main­tained, how­ev­er, that Gue­var­ro’s ap­proach to man­ag­ing the TTPS was re­fresh­ing and em­pow­er­ing to many of­fi­cers.

Gary: He shows lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, when asked his thoughts on Gue­var­ro’s per­for­mance thus far, said while 100 days was not enough to prop­er­ly as­sess his abil­i­ty as a leader, he was en­cour­aged by his work eth­ic and the proac­tive ap­proach to polic­ing.

Grif­fith, who al­so vis­it­ed crime scenes and par­tic­i­pat­ed in ex­er­cis­es along­side tac­ti­cal po­lice units dur­ing his tenure, said he felt that Gue­var­ro’s style of polic­ing was sim­i­lar to his own and

“He seems to be some­one who is on the ground, be­ing in­volved in the op­er­a­tion. That shows lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple, and it serves to mo­ti­vate the ju­nior of­fi­cers.

“He is al­so very ac­ces­si­ble, and he’s not afraid to take con­fronta­tion and not hide it. There have been sev­er­al is­sues in the po­lice ser­vice, and he has in no way shirked his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties; he has con­front­ed them head-on.

“He is head­ing in the right di­rec­tion, and hope­ful­ly he can build the foun­da­tion for a prop­er trans­for­ma­tion of the TTPS.”

When asked if he had any sug­ges­tions, Grif­fith warned that Gue­var­ro should al­so re­main vig­i­lant of in­ter­nal chal­lenges with­in the po­lice ser­vice, as he re­ferred to his own lead­er­ship, where he felt his au­thor­i­ty was be­ing un­der­mined by cer­tain po­lice of­fi­cers.

He not­ed that threats to the in­tegri­ty of the TTPS may not al­ways orig­i­nate from out­side the in­sti­tu­tion but from some who may try to sab­o­tage his ef­forts.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said it was too ear­ly to prop­er­ly as­sess Gue­var­ro’s per­for­mance, not­ing that he al­so did not have the chance to see any da­ta.

“I pre­fer as much as pos­si­ble that my com­ments be da­ta-dri­ven,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sought a re­sponse from the chair of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.