Awaiting that police audit

While we strongly advocate a medium to long term tackling of the causes of crime - including social factors as detailed in Prof Selwyn Ryan’s report, Youth at Risk, — clearly immediately we must also put the lid on the boiling cauldron of criminality now wrecking our nation.

To this end it is axiomatic that the Government and Police Service topbrass must know how many officers they have and how they are being deployed, and all goals of the audit initially announced by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and confirmed last week by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

For example, a perennial cry through the years has been that the Police Service is short-staffed by about 1,000 officers. This worrying reality is reflected in Budget 2017 figures which crucially shows a hefty jump of $154 million this year in the overtime allocation, which rises, over the three years, from $298 million (2015) to $323 million (last year), and to $476 million (for fiscal 2017) – all this on top of a rise in the TTPS bill for basic salary over the three-year period from $866 million (2015) to $1.07 billion (last year) to $1.42 billion (next year), with $30 million allotted for “vacant posts” to be filled this year.

The overtime figures alone show policy-makers’ virtual resignation to overtime as a reality that reflects a manpower shortage in a scenario not projected to change soon, but which shows the need for vacancies to be filled and paid at regular rates of salary, not overtime rates.

Al-Rawi’s disclosure of $21 billion allocated to the TTPS in the past decade shows the need for accountability of public funds, especially in a period of economic downturn, even as the entire TTPS allocation rose from $2.1 billion in 2015, to $2.25 billion spent last year, to a projected allocation this year of $2.88 billion.

Al-Rawi said the audit will reveal how many police staff, which stations, how many public reports each station gets, and how many of these result in a charge and then a conviction, as he said such a measurement would improve accountability and performance by officers, rather than merely “throwing money at solutions without value for money.” The audit is a good starting point to produce a “snapshot” in time of police deployment but cannot be the end of the story. More broadly, an examination must be done of the process of police recruitment, training, promotion and discipline.

Crucially, the well-being of individual officers in this high-stress occupation should also be looked at, say by way of an Employee Assistance Programme.

Further, with Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams just having received his ninth appointment to be acting in that position - even after the country had once paid millions of dollars in the recruitment and termination of Dwayne Gibbs and Jack Ewatski as former CoP and Deputy CoP — the process for recruiting a Commissioner remains costly, lengthy, bureaucratic and inefficient, a veritable boil that must be lanced. A new process must be agreed on by all parties.

In addition, all concerned - police, politician, public and professors of academia - must constantly address the philosophy that underpins our system of policing. To what extent are ideals such as community policing, policing by consent and police accountability, truly practised on the streets of TT? For example, community policing should not just be relegated to one unit to be dubbed, “Community Police” but should be an ideology lived by every officer whatever his/her unit. Technology such as computerisation and vehicles can enhance the role of the police officer, but he/she must also remain very grounded in the local community.

So we await the report, due March 31, as one measure towards stemming the country’s crime onslaught.