Finding a Commissioner of Police

The one thing which we totally inherited from the British, and have been unable to shed after almost 55 years of independence is our slavish commitment to colonial plodding as governance.

This chronic defect in our collective personality continues to drag us down and hold us back even as we can be brilliant, creative, innovative and successful in arts, culture, entrepreneurship and sports. But just add government or governance to any situation we need to solve or manage and everything comes to a stuttering halt. And nowhere is this defect more obvious than in our ongoing inability to find and appoint a commissioner of police for our beleaguered police service.

How is it not obvious to us that we need a modern, experienced and competent police commissioner with a track record in dealing with gang warfare, major international drug-running, kidnappings and horrific murders, as well as corruption within government, the police service and the business sector? And since it is obvious that our home grown police officers have neither the competence nor confidence to step up to this challenge, who should we bring in to solve our problems and to lift and lead our police service into a force working competently for our society? So we hired, at great cost, foreign universities and other agencies to find a commissioner of police for us. We waited to see the result: an officer experienced in solving the crimes with which we were beset— gang murders, kidnappings, drug running and the like? What came out of this exercise were two nice, gentle milquetoast mid-western Canadian officers, from a city which suffers from none of the horrific crimes we face daily. What could have been the rationale for choosing these two to deal with our gangland, drug-running, murderous and corrupt-at-every-level society? To head a police service which we were all apparently in agreement no local officer could rise to lead? And how come, after 50 years of Independence, and doing our own policing, we have been unable to develop a single competent, articulate and respected officer to lead our police service? Actually, this is also true of every aspect of governance, but in the police service the mental gridlock is more heavily ritualized and stuck in the 19th century.

Let us look at some comparisons: In January 1964, I went off to university in Houston. It was the time of civil rights activism and legislation. Anti-black racism was open and aggressive, and police once came to my apartment to shut down a student party, not for noise, but because there was a black fellow student from Nigeria in the house. The following day the same police officers came back to warn me never to do that again.

I never saw a black police officer in my almost four years in Houston, or in other towns I visited in the American South.

Why do I mention this? Because nowadays I am seeing on a regular basis, black police officers, including black chiefs of police from Texas and other southern states speaking at critical news conferences involving criminal matters. I am seeing strong, articulate, competent and confident people, handling aggressive media with ease and respect. These people could not even have been on the force in my time there. And my heart fills with pride for these men and how they have grown in one generation to become what they now are—competent and respected, notwithstanding the barriers that were placed in their path 50 years ago.

So how come that here at home, where we have had our police officers trained and serving for over a hundred years, we have not been able to produce a single senior officer who could ever stand in the shoes of those black American officers we see on our TV news? What is holding us back? You see me? If I had to select a commissioner of police for our service, I would go to those cities in the USA where drugs, gangs and violent crime are known, and recruit a police commissioner, and a couple of assistant commissioners.

I believe that such persons will be able to instil pride and discipline back into our police service, and would be examples for our young police officers to emulate and aspire to follow.

Whether such persons would be able to survive the overriding Victorian ministerial authority and obstructionism of this society is a n o t h e r qu e st i on altogether