Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has is­sued a di­rect ap­peal to hard-work­ing po­lice of­fi­cers to elim­i­nate the rogue el­e­ments from their ranks to pre­vent any un­der­min­ing of the ef­forts to re­duce crime dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and re­build pub­lic trust.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over po­ten­tial abuse of po­lice pow­ers un­der the on­go­ing state of emer­gency dur­ing yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices, To­ba­go, Dr Row­ley said there must be in­ter­nal ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“To­day, I want to ap­peal to the de­cent, law-abid­ing po­lice of­fi­cers of all ranks to not tol­er­ate with­in the ranks of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, of­fi­cers who are un­fit for the job that they hold,” Row­ley said.

“The same way you say to the pub­lic, ‘If you see some­thing, say some­thing,’ I would say to the of­fi­cers them­selves to­day, if you know some­thing, say some­thing.”

He stressed that rogue of­fi­cers erode the trust cit­i­zens have in the po­lice and will un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty dur­ing the SoE.

“Those hand­ful of of­fi­cers to whom the ref­er­ence is made, they are just as un­want­ed in this so­ci­ety as the crim­i­nal with the gun, be­cause the ef­fect of such an of­fi­cer de­stroy­ing the trust of the pop­u­la­tion in the po­lice ser­vice pre­vents the pub­lic from co­op­er­at­ing and shar­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion with the po­lice.”

Row­ley said while he is aware of the risks in­volved in grant­i­ng en­hanced pow­ers to po­lice of­fi­cers, this step was nec­es­sary to com­bat crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty ef­fec­tive­ly. 

He com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to tak­ing med­ica­tion de­spite po­ten­tial side ef­fects.

“If we’re not go­ing to give [the po­lice] that ex­tra leg up over the crim­i­nals be­cause a few of their col­leagues might mis­be­have and might hurt one or two cit­i­zens, I think we would have been giv­ing the crim­i­nals the ben­e­fit.”

He called on the TTPS lead­er­ship to ac­tive­ly ad­dress these is­sues.

“The lead­er­ship of the po­lice ser­vice should do and must do every­thing pos­si­ble to min­i­mize and re­move those pos­si­bil­i­ties.”

Un­der the SoE, mem­bers of the De­fence Force have al­so been grant­ed the pow­ers of po­lice of­fi­cers to en­hance se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

Row­ley clar­i­fied that this mea­sure is tem­po­rary and aimed at ad­dress­ing an ur­gent sit­u­a­tion.

“The State of Emer­gency gives that pow­er for in­ter­ven­tion be­cause we deem it nec­es­sary at this time.

“This is not go­ing to be the end-all and be-all of the fight against crime. A whole se­ries of oth­er ac­tions will con­tin­ue well be­yond the life of any state of emer­gency.”

He said he is aware of the fears raised by some cit­i­zens about po­ten­tial abus­es but asked for a col­lec­tive re­silience and fo­cus.

“The ques­tion now is: Is the so­ci­ety suf­fi­cient­ly strong, to­geth­er, and res­olute to pre­vent that fear from hand­ing vic­to­ry to the crim­i­nals who think they have us cor­nered?”

Row­ley re­as­sured po­lice of­fi­cers that they have the Gov­ern­ment’s full back­ing.

Draw­ing a par­al­lel with the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he asked the of­fi­cers to re­main stead­fast.

“When the world didn’t know any­thing more than there was a virus that would kill you once it takes a hold of you, our health of­fi­cers, doc­tors, and nurs­es stayed the course for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"I hold that out to every of­fi­cer as rep­re­sent­ing the re­silience of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”