JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter - In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Two months af­ter the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice re­strict­ed leave for of­fi­cers and a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley called for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus to do more in their fight against crime, some se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing sent on leave for as long as five years.

Leave re­stric­tions were man­dat­ed in Au­gust ow­ing to in­creas­ing crime.

An in­ter­nal TTPS memo on Au­gust 23 said, “Due to the ex­i­gen­cies of the ser­vice, all ap­pli­ca­tions for va­ca­tion leave ex­ceed­ing 14 days or re­quir­ing per­mis­sion to pro­ceed out of the coun­try will be re­strict­ed un­til fur­ther no­tice. This mea­sure has be­come nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate cur­rent an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives where ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er is re­quired to stymie the on­slaught of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.”

How­ev­er, it now seems the TTPS is eas­ing up on this di­rec­tive as sev­er­al se­nior mem­bers are now be­ing sent on leave.

Among of­fi­cers sent on leave is Snr Supt Roger Alexan­der, who has been the face of the TTPS as co-host of its Be­yond the Tape pro­gramme and head of the now de­funct Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), a dis­band­ed elite po­lice unit cre­at­ed by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Alexan­der’s leave will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary and last 773 days.

Guardian Me­dia called and sent mes­sages to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on the leave de­ci­sion. Alexan­der was al­so con­tact­ed on who will be his re­place­ment. Those calls and mes­sages went unan­swered.

Al­so be­ing sent on leave are se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents Anand Rame­sar, Bri­an Ram­phal, Richard Smith and Os­wain Subero. Of this group, Smith re­spond­ed and he said his leave is be­ing stag­gered.

“It is not like what peo­ple think­ing, like is some clan­des­tine thing. The Com­mis­sion­er is just do­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties and stag­ger­ing the of­fi­cers who need to go on leave. She did not al­low peo­ple to ap­ply for it be­cause they will take the Au­gust va­ca­tion and these things, so she said when peo­ple will go,” Smith said.

Told that some of­fi­cers were up­set se­niors were be­ing sent on leave while ju­niors were still be­ing re­strict­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for the TTPS to in­crease its fight against crime, Smith, who has sev­er­al months’ leave to go on from late next year, said the CoP was work­ing down to the low­er ranks. He em­pha­sised that it was not a case of the Com­mis­sion­er “pun­ish­ing” of­fi­cers, say­ing Hare­wood-Christo­pher has had to deal with a lot of ex­ter­nal crit­i­cism and such neg­a­tiv­i­ty com­ing from with­in the po­lice ser­vice was overkill.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said no of­fi­cers had come to the as­so­ci­a­tion with griev­ances aris­ing out of leave for se­niors. He too said the leave for as much as 12 se­nior of­fi­cers would be done in a tiered sys­tem, so there will be some over­lap­ping to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity at the lead­er­ship lev­el.

On Tues­day, af­ter Row­ley called for all state agen­cies to in­crease their ef­forts, se­nior po­lice told Guardian Me­dia they are do­ing a lot and with­out the re­sources, the re­dou­bling of ef­forts will lead to a “dou­bling of fail­ure.” They said the re­dou­bling means the po­lice will have to in­crease tar­get­ed pa­trols, re­strict leave and in­crease vis­i­bil­i­ty, all things re­peat­ed­ly done when there is an in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“All this means is more boots on the ground and while leave has been re­strict­ed, some se­nior of­fi­cers are be­ing sent on leave, so that de­mo­ti­vat­ed the ju­nior of­fi­cers. We don’t have the equip­ment; of­fi­cers are burnt out. Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers are not get­ting ex­tra hours. This is not new. You are just spin­ning top in mud,” a se­nior of­fi­cer said.

He added that while in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty is need­ed, with­out the equip­ment, such as ve­hi­cles, they are un­able to ef­fec­tive­ly do their job.

On Tues­day, Dick­son, when asked if the po­lice had more to give in the fight against crime, said: “Do we have more to give? That is a good ques­tion. The an­swer to that is that the record would show we con­tin­ue to give. The record will show that we have been re­lent­less in giv­ing. The call by the au­thor­i­ties to give more, I think, is a con­sis­tent call across the board.”