MERIT VS LONGEVITY

In a striking departure from custom, police officers who go beyond the call of duty will shortly access promotion on the basis of merit and performance. This will represent a marked departure from the traditional method of promoting officers through employing largely the yardstick of longevity or seniority. Hopefully, this new promotion culture will embrace other areas of the public sector, for example the Public Service, the  Teaching, Medical and Nursing professions and what have you, and bring it more in line with what obtains in the private sector. In the middle 1950s, and following, several persons were brought in from outside of the Police Service (then referred to as the Police Force) as commissioned officers in a move which recognised that many of the policemen who were rising through the ranks at the time were not necessarily leadership material. Among the entrants from outside to the commissioned officer ranks were Tony May and Jim Rodriguez, who would go on to become Commissioners of Police, and Clive Sealy and Dennis Ramdwar both of whom would become Deputy Commissioners.  

Admittedly, however, promotion through the ranks has not always been as a result of the culture of seniority. Indeed, there are two outstanding cases of former Constables, who achieved the Office of Commissioner of Police, and whose relatively fast promotions were credited to merit and performance — Eustace Bernard and Randolph Burroughs. With the shift, the successes of Bernard and Burroughs will no longer be regarded as aberrations.
 
What is significant is that the decision to promote police officers on the basis of merit and performance was taken not merely by the Police Service Commission, but has come out of discussions, a meeting of minds, between the Commission and the police executive. It was not imposed by the Commission, but instead bears the stamp of approval of senior police officers themselves. In the future, officers who go beyond the call of duty, and there are many of them who do this today, will know that their concern and commitment will be recognised and not merely by a token monetary reward and perhaps patronising pat on the back, but by upward movement and enhanced pensions.

Firm guidelines, however, will have to be laid down to prevent the possibility of any of the senior officers, who may be partial to certain juniors, from negating the principle of recognition of going beyond the call of duty, by encouraging the padding of reports in favour of these junior officers. Otherwise, the whole concept will be frustrated and the coinage debased. The time has come though to reward conscientious officers with promotion rather than the always dubious policy of seniority. Seniority should come into the equation only when officers being considered for promotion have equally satisfied merit and performance criteria.